Is "Active Check" required somewhere?

[mcdonamw]

For a host to be monitored does it have to have either Active Check or Passive Check somewhere, be it at the host, host group, service, template, etc.?

I'm looking at a host's configuration for a CPU check, and I cannot find either one of the check options enabled anywhere (it's set to skip everywhere I look) so I'm wondering how it is being monitored at all.

[snapier3]

These options are most likely being set in the template for the check.
Check to see what the settings are in the template being inherited.

--SN

[jmichaelson]

How do you have the host configured to be checked in general? Are you using NCPA or some other method?

[cnorell]

The check does indeed need to be configured somewhere; nothing happens by magic.

I'd also put my money on inheritance.

[kg2857]

Typically a host check is defined to ping the host to see if it is reachable. You can use a different check but something standardized is somewhat normal and ping/icmp is the usual way.
You need an am I alive check to tell the system to continue checks. The main cfg can fail all other checks or not and alert or not.
I wonder what the real question is?