Embodiments for managing access to Mtrees using a mechanism through the use of net groups that contain a pool of IP addresses with configuration information that is automatically propagated to new nodes as they are added to a defined net group to facilitate zero configuration when scaling a network. Using net groups, access to an Mtree across nodes in a data center or similar network can be managed with a group of IP addresses spread across all the nodes in the cluster as a single net group entity. The net group provides flexibility to create multiple net groups that can be used to manage the appliance in management, diagnostic, data, and interconnect domains. It allows flexibility to manage the access to Mtree from different networks and security domains, and allows a user to configure the network attributes of all the IP addresses as a single entity.