checkhostalive vs ping service

Marc Powell marc at ena.com
Fri Oct 31 17:33:17 CET 2008


On Oct 31, 2008, at 9:57 AM, L B wrote:

> Thanks Mark for your answers
>
>>> What is the difference between checking a host is alive with a check
>>> in the host template (check_command check-host-alive), and  
>>> creating a
>>> ping service applied to the host ?
>>
>> If the host check returns a non-OK state, notifications for services
>> on that host are suppressed. If the host is specified as a parent to
>> another host that is also unavailable, the second host is put in an
>> UNREACHABLE state as opposed to a DOWN state.
>
> Hmm ok...

>> If you like the suppression of notifications for services on down
>> hosts or would like to use the parenting/reachability logic, host
>> checks would be necessary.
>
> I don't get notification of services unavailability even with hot
> check disabled, because Nagios does a host check directly after it
> find a service unavailable.

I thought you said you didn't do host checks? So you're not really  
asking about the merits of a host check v.s. a service check but  
rather the merits of (Regularly Scheduled host checks and no service  
checks) and (Service check and on-demand host check only)?

> Not additional if you replace the ping check by the hostcheck

I guess that I'm a traditionalist and still feel that every host  
should have a service check =) That may be a something I need to change.

> Is the impact of enabling hostchecks vs ping service only a status of
> UNREACHABLE instead of DOWN for child hosts ?

No, notification suppression as well, but if you're doing on-demand  
host checks currently you're already getting that. The only real  
benefits may be one less regular check to configure (the service  
check) and the possible use of a cached host check instead of a new  
active check when determining outages. IMHO based on my expectation/ 
understanding of the new host check methodology, the actual number of  
checks performed either way are going to be similar except over very  
long time periods with volatile networks.

--
Marc


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