Configuring a service group enables you to manage a group of services as easily as a single service. For example, if you enable or disable any option, such as compression, health monitoring or graceful shutdown, for a service group, the option gets enabled for all the members of the service group.

After creating a service group, you can bind it to a virtual server, and you can add services to the group. You can also bind monitors to service groups.

The members of a service group can be identified by IP address or server name.

Using domain-name based service (DBS) group members is advantageous because you need not reconfigure the member on the NetScaler appliance if the IP address of the member changes. The appliance automatically senses such changes through the configured name server. This feature is particularly useful in cloud scenarios, where the service provider can change a physical server or change the IP address for a service. If you specify a DBS group member, the NetScaler learns the IP address dynamically.

You can bind both IP-based and DBS members to the same service group.

Note: If you use DBS service group members, make sure that either a name server is specified or a DNS server is configured on the NetScaler. A domain name will be resolved into an IP address only if the corresponding address record is present on the NetScaler or the name server.