I created a group called “Organization Y” where any computer with a DNS name containing “org-y” is part of the group.
I have a site relevance definition for the IBM License Metric Tool that uses this group. The site relevance is defined such that if a computer is NOT in the group “Organization Y”, then the computer is subscribed. (In other words, I don’t want Organization Y’s computers subscribed to ILMT.)
It was suggested to me that it is not a best practice to reference groups in the site relevance definition. Instead, it was suggested to use the same definition in the site relevance; namely “DNS name DOES NOT CONTAIN “org-y”” instead of “Computer is not a member of group “Organization Y””.
Is the statement about site relevance best practices true? If so, why isn’t it a best practice to use group membership in the site relevance?
There are reasons for this. One is a delay. The client must become a member of the group first before it will ever become a member of the site, which means it will take longer.
Another reason is unintended interdependence. The members of the group are determined by the group relevance PLUS the relevance of the site the group is within. If the group is in the master action site, then it will not have any extra relevance, but that might not always be the case.
The added problem is not just that you are using group membership within a site subscription, but on top of that you are saying that it is all computers NOT in the group. Well, all clients will start out NOT in that group even when they should be. This means they will be relevant to the ILMT site until they determine that they should be in the group, and then reevaluate the ILMT site subscription to realize they should no longer be in that site.
If you have too many complicated relevance interdependence, then your clients can actually get stuck in a loop of subscribing and unsubscribing from a site over and over again. I have accidentally done this before.
Great explanation, thank you … and here I was thinking that using a group was a good thing because I can reuse that group as necessary and be consistent where it is used. I understand the issues you’ve listed. Thanks again.