How do you handle odd contacts?

Furnish, Trever G TGFurnish at herff-jones.com
Wed Jun 25 20:11:26 CEST 2003


Thanks, but I think either I'm doing a poor job of communicating or I'm
making bad assumptions...

Maybe an example will help.  I currently have:

In contactgroup unixadmin, the following contacts: corp1, corp2
In contactgroup winadmin, the following contacts: corpA, corpB
In hostgroup unix, the following hosts: unix1, unix2, unix3
In hostgroup windows, the following hosts: win1, win2, win3
In service def telnet, the following hostgroup: unix
In service def smb, the following hostgroup: windows

My newly interested remote site admin (region3admin) is responsible only for
unix3 and win3.  I think what you are saying is I can create a new, regional
hostgroup containing hosts unix3 and win3, and also assign to it a new
contact group containing only newadmin.

So I create contactgroup region3 with the following contact: region3admin
And I create hostgroup region3 with the following hosts: unix3,win3

Now how do I tell Nagios that region3admin should be notified when the smb
service goes down on win3 or the telnet service goes down on unix3, without
also alerting her to problems with win1, win2, unix1, and unix2?

I can't apply a telnet service check to the region3 hostgroup because only
one of the boxes does telnet.  Ditto for smb.  Also, those services are
already being checked once - the resulting alerts just don't go to
region3admin, but rather to the unixadmin and winadmin contactgroups.

The only solution I can imagine (and I'm not even sure it will work) is to
create logical hostgroups for each region (region1unix, region2unix,
region3unix, region1win, region2win, region3win) and assign services based
on those groups, I've effectively made my status grid page and status
overview page pretty ugly, since I end up with a hostgroup for almost every
host.

I really hope I'm just missing something.  Thanks for your time and help so
far.

--
Trever


-----Original Message-----
From: Subhendu Ghosh [mailto:sghosh at sghosh.org]
Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2003 12:38 PM
To: Furnish, Trever G
Subject: RE: [Nagios-users] How do you handle odd contacts?


service definitions can have multiple contact-groups...

with templating in effect, there is no inheritance, so you must overwrite 
the contact_groups entry with the contents of the template and add the 
local admin's group.

One way to manage this it to not put contact_group info in the templates  
that are used for sites that have local admins.

-sg

On Wed, 25 Jun 2003, Furnish, Trever G wrote:

> But then which one gets the services?  I want her to get alerts regarding
> the service checks as well as the host checks, but I don't want to check
the
> services twice (once for her, once for corporate).
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Subhendu Ghosh [mailto:sghosh at sghosh.org]
> Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2003 11:49 AM
> To: Furnish, Trever G
> Cc: Nagios-Users List (E-mail)
> Subject: Re: [Nagios-users] How do you handle odd contacts?
> 
> 
> You could have the host be members of multiple hostgroups - one logical 
> and one regional.
> 
> -sg
> 
> On Wed, 25 Jun 2003, Furnish, Trever G wrote:
> 
> > I'm in a quandry.  I have my hosts and services and contacts nicely laid
> out
> > in a functional way (unix servers, windows servers, routers, switches,
> dns,
> > etc) that fits nicely with the job responsibilities of the people who
> > normally respond to outages - but now I have one remote admin at one
site
> > who would like to receive alerts only when one of her systems is down.
> > 
> > The problem is that in order to send her alerts concerning only her
> systems
> > (one unix box, one windows box), I think I would have to remove her
hosts
> > from their logical groups and create additional groups (host and
contact)
> > for just those systems.  That seems like a really bad solution - all I
> want
> > is to allow a contact to get alerts regarding a specific device, without
> > screwing up the logical layout of the rest of the config file.
> > 
> > Am I missing something?  Is there a way to "apply a contact to a host or
> > service" instead of the other way around?  How do you handle this at
your
> > site?
> > 
> > It seems like the way Nagios handles the connections between contacts
and
> > hosts and services is only partially complete.  Specificly, I can apply
a
> > contact group to a hostgroup or a service, but I can't apply a contact
(no
> > "group") to it.  Nor can I apply a contact or contact group to a single
> > host.  It's nice that grouping is available, but it's not so nice that
> > grouping is *required*. :-(
> > 
> > I've been using the template files for several years now but I admit it
> > still gives me a headache when I think about it - if I'm missing
something
> > I'd love any advice.
> > 
> > I think the situation I have is probably similar to that in lots of
> > companies with big branch offices.  I have a core operations team at a
> > central head quarters office, but I also have branch offices that
usually
> > have one or more local admins.  The local admins should only get alerts
> > related to their devices (in other words, based on geography); the
> > headquarters operations team should get alerts based on their area of
> > expertise (unix, windows, routers, etc).
> > 
> > The only way I can see to satisfy my requirements is to put every host
> into
> > its own hostgroup, just because I can't apply a single contact to a
single
> > host or service.  What am I missing?
> > 
> > --
> > Trever
> > 
> > 
> > 
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> 
> 

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