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title: Creating Server Groups
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product: Hybrid Standalone Runtimes
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# Creating Server Groups

> For the full documentation index, see: https://docs.mulesoft.com/llms.txt

Create server groups to organize your hybrid standalone servers for easier management and
deployment.

A server group is a set of servers that act as a single deployment target for applications so that
you don’t have to deploy applications to each server individually.

## Understanding Server Groups

Deploying applications to servers in server groups provides redundancy so you can restore
applications more seamlessly and quickly, with less downtime.

Unlike clusters, application instances in a server group run in isolation from the application
instances running on the other servers in the group. If you experience concurrency issues with
server groups, consider grouping servers in clusters.

### Understanding Server Groups and Mule Apps Behavior

When you deploy Mule applications to a server group, these behaviors apply:

#### Application Deployment and Updates

- When you add a Mule application to a server group, it deploys to all servers in the group
  automatically.

- When you update a Mule application in a server group, the update applies to all servers in the
  group. Review these considerations for server updates:

  - Servers with `Unknown` status are not updated until they reconnect to the MuleSoft control
    plane.

  - You can only update a Mule application once if servers in the group have `Unknown` status.

  - If you update a Mule application (for example, from version 1 to version 2) while servers have
    `Unknown` status, you can’t perform additional updates (such as from version 2 to version 3)
    until you remove the unknown servers from the server group or start and reconnect the unknown
    servers to the control plane.

- When you delete a Mule application from a server group, it removes the application from all
  servers in the group.

#### Manual Application Management (Not Recommended)

Manually managing Mule applications directly on servers that belong to a server group is not
recommended and defeats the purpose of using server groups.

If you manually modify the applications directory (`apps`) on a server that belongs to a server
group, the following issues occur:

- Adding applications directly  
  If you manually add a `.jar` file to a server’s `apps` folder, the application deploys only to
  that specific server and becomes a rogue API that is not visible in Runtime Manager’s server group
  view and is not deployed to other servers in the group.

- Updating applications directly  
  If you manually update a Mule application by deleting the previous version and dropping a new
  `.jar` file, the same issues as adding applications directly apply.

- Deleting applications directly  
  If you manually delete a Mule application folder (including the anchor file), the API is deleted,
  but since you didn’t remove the application from the server group, it redeploys when you restart
  the server.

## Before You Begin

Before creating server groups, ensure that you have:

- At least one hybrid standalone server configured

- Appropriate permissions to create and manage server groups

- Access to Runtime Manager

## Requirements and Limitations

Additionally, review these requirements and limitations:

All servers in a server group must be running the same versions of:

- Mule runtime engine

- Runtime Manager agent

- Java

- You can create a server group with servers with the `Running` or the `Disconnected` status, but
  these can’t be in the same group as servers with the `Created` status.

- You can create a server group with servers with the `Created` status.

- To add a server on which existing applications are currently running to a server group, first stop
  and delete the applications from the server.

## Create a Server Group

When creating a server group, you can either:

- Add the servers to Runtime Manager first and then create the server group.

- Create the group and add servers to it later.

To create a server group:

1.  From Anypoint Platform, select **Runtime Manager**.

2.  Select **Servers**.

3.  Click **Create Group**.

4.  In the **Create Server Group** page, enter the name for the server group.

    Group names can contain between 3-40 alphanumeric characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9) and hyphens (-).
    They can’t start or end with a hyphen, and they can’t contain spaces or other characters.

5.  Select the servers to include in your new server group.

6.  Click **Create Group**.

    - The new server group appears in the **Servers** list.

    - The servers no longer appear in the **Servers** list.

To see the list of servers in the group, select the server group name.

## Next Steps

After creating server groups, you can:

- Deploy applications to the entire group

- Configure monitoring and alerts at the group level

- Manage properties and settings across all servers in the group

## See Also

- [Creating Servers](https://docs.mulesoft.com/hybrid-standalone/creating-servers)

- [Managing Server Groups](https://docs.mulesoft.com/hybrid-standalone/managing-servers-groups)

- [Creating Clusters](https://docs.mulesoft.com/hybrid-standalone/creating-clusters)