Groups in the SolarWinds Platform are logical containers used to organize monitored entities for easier management, alerting, and reporting. According to theSolarWinds Platform Administrator Guide, one of the most powerful features of the grouping engine is the ability to automate membership. Specifically,groups can be created based on custom properties.
When defining a group, administrators can choose between "Static Selection" (manual) or "Dynamic Query." By using dynamic queries, a group can be configured to automatically include any node, interface, or volume that matches specific criteria, such as a custom property value (e.g., Department = Engineering or Site = London). This ensures that as new infrastructure is added to the environment and tagged with the appropriate metadata, the groups update themselves without human intervention.
Regarding the other options: groupscanbe members of other groups (nested groups), which is a common practice for creating complex hierarchical views of an organization. The default status rollup mode is typically set to "Mixed" or "Show Worst Status" rather than "Best Status," to ensure that any single failure within the group is visible to the administrator. Finally, rollup options absolutely apply to all members within the group, as they define how the collective health of those members is calculated and displayed on the dashboard.
