Can Nagios force status of Host?

[Mike McClure]

First of all, you normally would use a service check ("check_command") to determine
if a host is up or down.  Usually people use check-host-alive, which checks for a
reponse to ICMP echo, a.k.a., PING.  If that defined check_command test fails, the
host is considered to be down.

Second, just because none of the services that you check on the host are responding,
does not mean that the host is "down".  For example, a host might be running just
fine, but the HTTP daemon isn't running because of a configuration problem.  Does
that mean the host is down?  No.  The service is, but not the host, since other
services, like FTP or SSH or IMAP might be working just fine.

If you really consider a host "down" if a particular service is not responding, then
make a check for that service the "check_command" for that host.  You can even have
it check multiple services for that check_command (left as an example for the
reader.)  Try doing *that* in Big Brother.  :)

I am confused about your rationale for this.  Unless they are responsible for the
host platform itself, why would your co-workers care about a host being down anyway?
 It's been my experience that most users just care about services, not hosts.

- Mike


> I have a situation where a service has problems, (PING drops packets or server IP
> address is actually changed) at which time Nagios correctly sets the Service status
> to "Critical".  It does not however, set the Host status to 'HOST DOWN".  When the
> server comes back up again, Nagios sets the Service status to "OK" but Host status
> is not affected.
>
> Q:  Shouldn't Nagios set the Host status to "HOST DOWN" when the services totally
> fail and are set to a "CRITICAL" status?  If not, any ideas on how I can force it?
> I have looked at the documentation (and will continue to do so).    This is
> significant to us because we want to correctly alert co-workers about up and down of
> hosts.
>
> Thanks
>
> Larry
>
>
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-- 
Mike McClure, CCIE # 5125, CISSP # 30232
PNE Services, Inc. -  http://www.pneservices.com
mmcclure [at] pneservices [dot] com
mobile: 913-636-5590



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