Host dependent on a service being up (i.e. VPN)

[TomNH]

I've searched for this but I haven't been able to find anything and I can't figure out how to get this working.

My (simplified) environment is as follows:

I am monitoring my Cisco-ASA. The Cisco-ASA has a service check to monitor the status of a VPN link to my customer. I have 50+ hosts at my customer location that I monitor for multiple services (ssh, uptime, etc..).

Unfortunately last night the VPN link went down. I received the "VPN link" status email stating that it was down, however I also got bombarded with emails saying that all of the remote hosts were unreachable. Obviously if the VPN link is down, none of the remote systems are going to be reachable.

How can I configure it so that if the VPN link is down that Nagios will not email me about the remote hosts being down? My Cisco-ASA was up, but the VPN link to my customer was down. Is it even possible to configure nagios for this?

In reality I'm monitoring my ASA for multiple VPN links (each one to a different customer) and monitoring multiple systems for each customer.

I've to to imagine that it is possible.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[eloyd]

Make a new host (I'll call it "Penelope") with an IP address that's on the other side of the VPN. Make the parent of each dependent host be the new host you just created. Nagios will take care of the rest.

When the VPN is up, Penelope will be pingable (or check SSH port, web port, or whatever you use to determine that it's up) and all is well with her children.

When VPN is not up, Penelope will not be pingable, and all her children will be marked as unreachable by Nagios.

[TomNH]

Thanks. I was just doing a little more thinking about this and came to the same conclusion.

[tgriep]

Thanks eloyd for the help, it is appreciated.
TomNH, let us know if you have any more questions about this.