Add Utility Appliance Devices to Utility Groups

This content describes how to add Utility Appliances to utility groups.
A Utility Group consists of a set of Utility Appliance devices that are associated together in a cluster. An end user can assign and deploy policies on:
  • A single Utility Appliance device
  • Different Utility Groups
  • A combination of a Utility Appliance device and a Utility group
Note the following guidance:
  • Each Utility Appliance can only be assigned to one Utility Group at any time.
  • The Utility Appliances grouped in a Utility Group run orchestration software to coordinate with each other. As such, these Utility Appliances should be co-located within the same network region, firewalled area, or Datacenter.
  • PAM is unable to determine the location of Utility Appliances in relation to each other. As a result, you must know and set up the information in PAM appropriately.
To create a Utility Group, add Utility Appliance devices to Utility Groups with a provision type of
Utility Group
to make them operational.
Each Utility device can belong to only one Utility Group.
To add Utility Appliance devices to Utility Groups, follow these steps:
  1. Navigate to
    Devices
    ,
    Manage Device Groups
    .
  2. Select
    Add
    to create a new device group for your Utility Appliances. The
    Add Device Group
    dialog opens.
  3. Enter a name for the Utility Group in the
    Name
    field.
  4. Select
    Utility Group
    from the
    Provision Type
    drop-down.
  5. On the
    Devices
    tab, move the desired Utility Appliance devices from the
    Available Devices
    list to the
    Selected Devices
    column.
  6. Select
    OK
    .
PAM creates a cluster from the Utility Appliances in a Utility Group, starting the Distribution Server software on the Utility Appliances, which then start communicating with PAM.
To verify that the operation was successful, navigate to
Credentials
,
Manage A2A
,
A2A Clients
and check the status indicator beside the listed Utility Appliances.
When updating a Utility Group,
do not
remove
all
current members and add a new member or members in a single update operation.
Instead, use multiple updates as shown in the following procedure:
  1. Remove all members from the Utility Group and commit the change.
  2. Add the required new members to the Utility Group and commit the change.