Reason for dropping contact_groups from hostgroup ?

[Yann DIRSON]

Hi all,

I am using 2.0b3, and I'm hit, like others before me, by the removal of 
"contact_groups" from the hostgroup directive.  Note that 
docs/notifications.html in 2.0b3 still mentions this feature.

The changelog mentions that this feature was removed to make things 
consistent with service notifications, but does not explain why this 
feature was considered useless.

My problem is, I have many hostgroups, used to activate specific checks, 
most notably per-organisational-unit hostgroups (not all services are 
deployed in all OUs), but also per-OS, per-type (server, network 
equipment, etc.).  The contacts for those machines are not the same, 
depending on the hostgroup.  Specifying a contact_group for the hostgroup 
seems the obvious way to declare this.

If I want to declare such a setup using only host definitions, I can't see 
how to avoid declaring host templates for each combination of 
ou/os/type/whatever: this clearly does not scale.

Is there a clean way to get the equivalent functionality, or should this 
feature simply reintroduced in 2.0 ?


Another related issue, for which I did not find a solution, is how to send 
service notifications to contacts defined on a per-host basis (the admins 
for the machines, presumably located in the same part of the building, or 
in direct contact to the users).  Maybe this could be done by adding a new 
notify_host_contacts flag to services (and servicegroups), that would 
cause service notifications to be sent to host contacts, and possibly a 
per-host services_contact_groups, if there is a need for those contacts to 
be different from the host contacts (although I have no use for the latter 
myself at the moment).

Best regards,
-- 
Yann.



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