<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=us-ascii"> <META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="MS Exchange Server version 6.0.6556.0"> <TITLE>services.cfg versus hostsgroups.cfg</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY>  hi all, sorry if this may be a newbie question, as i am really a newbie! :P in my organisation each group of administrators are in charge of their own set of hosts and the services running on top of those hosts. the thing is, different host groups may run the same set of services, eg. smtp, and therefore need to contact a particular administrator when that smtp service is down. i understand that we can easily define the person to be contacted by adding the contact under the "services.cfg". but that is more like "if smtp is down (no matter which host), contact administrator so and so" rather than "if anything happen to this host as well as the services running on it, contact so and so". for the case of "hostgroups.cfg", the administrators are contacted if the entire host is unavailable, and not when the services on the hosts are down, so it seems like this is not the way to go either. it looks to me the only way is to define the service twice (or many more if there are many more groups of administrators), and in each definition, put in the different administrator contacts and the different hosts. any advice to a better approach? thanx in advance. WONG Eik Lin Systems Engineer Computer Centre, NUS </BODY> </HTML>