How to Get Acknowledgement Escalations/Notifications Without the Volume of Problem Alerts.

[Chris Waters]

I realize that this subject may be a horse that is already severely
beaten, but I am trying to see if there is a better way to handle
escalations other than the way I do it now.  One thing that Nagios seems
to lack is a bit of flexibility with regard to Acknowledgments which
becomes an issue for how we would like to handle
notifications/escalations.  Unless I have missed something, in order to
get a notification or and escalation, you must be a valid contact for
that notification/escalation.  Let's say as a manager, you want to know
when a problem occurs (get notification 1), when it gets acknowledged,
and when it recovers but no other notifications.  I don't think this is
possible currently because Acknowledgements can't be specified in the
contact definitions.  This means you have to send every notification
from the first problem to the recovery if you want to get an
acknowledgment.

What we do is use a notification command that is a process that
basically adds the logic to suppress alerts unless the criteria for a
given user is met (Checks a db for things like if the notification #
matches some value and for what type of alert d/w/u/r).  For myself, I
get alert #2 for any state and nothing else until it's acknowledged or
recovers.  It's not a bad process but it's still another part to manage
and it adds overhead.  The big thing is getting the acknowledgment so we
know an issue is being dealt with but with a large network, we don't
need to see every alert.

So, who's doing anything similar but more importantly were you able to
achieve it purely with the tools provided within Nagios for
contacts/notifications/escalations.

Also, if anyone wants to see the methodology I am using now, I am happy
to send that on.  Currently it's limited to a single alert but I am
working on a method to allow for "reminders" that something hasn't been
acted on yet as well as if you just want to get more than a single
problem notification.  This means it could send an alert on notification
2,15,45-100 (what ever you want) without sending all the stuff in the
middle unless it's an acknowledgment or recovery.

Thanks.
 

Chris Waters
Technology Services - Network Group
JELD-WEN, Inc.
Information Systems
cwaters at jeld-wen.com

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