Adding similar hosts en masse

[dtlrinc]

Not sure that this is the correct place for this but I figured I will start here before moving on to any other part of the support forums.

Is there a way to apply configuration of pods of hosts? For example if I am using a non distributed setup of Nagios XI, but had the intent of monitoring pods of hosts that are identical between pods and will follow some sort IP schema that denotes the same types of devices. Is there an easier way of adding each to the XI CCM hosts section so as to reduce error from adding in the hosts.

Full example: POD 1

device 1: xxx.xxx.xxx.254
device 2: xxx.xxx.xxx.200
device 3: xxx.xxx.xxx.201
device 4: xxx.xxx.xxx.10
device 5: xxx.xxx.xxx.15

So on and so forth, now pods 2 through whatever will have devices reachable via the same last octet. So I guess what am I asking is two part, one add multiple hosts as a group in one shot and secondly do so by entering some base IP (XXX.XXX.XXX)and the other hosts will attach the last octet as appropriate.

Am I looking for too much here or missing something obvious?

Thanks in advance for any advice or input
Nigel

[avandemore]

You may wish to start here:
Using The Core Config Manager For Host Management

Information about templates is included here. Does this answer your question?

[dtlrinc]

Unfortunately no. I have used the referenced article and it works as designed, what I am unable to do using that document is say:
- A new POD of servers are coming online.
- That POD will look exactly the same in structure as any other pod that is already in monitoring.
- Each POD uses a VPN tunnel to communicate, so in essence they are mapped to some network segment that is controlled.
- IT simply clicks a few options and passes the needed arguments and the hosts are added to the system.

Currently what I will have to do:
- Set up one POD
- Then copy it.
- Then fix all the names with "copy_x" and so on
- Then fix all the ip addresses since those are copied as well for each host under a parent host
- Then fix all parent/child relationships

You get the idea, I hope. Now I have already done this 104 times and yes it can be done but it is very prone to errors or missing some info as I have made those mistakes myself.
What I am asking is if there is a way to define a group, but not a host group or a host template that will have to be manually applied to each host defined?

[dtlrinc]

To add on to it:

I am quite sure that using solely Nagios Core I can configure a CM system like, puppet or ansible, to write the config files and they will write it all but then the issue is as far as I know Nagios Xi doesn't use those config files. They have to be imported, correct?

[avandemore]

Nagios XI uses the same config files, just in a different way. You can place the config files in /usr/local/nagios/etc/import/ and do an apply configuration from within Nagios XI. It will attempt to import anything in that directory. Be careful using this as Nagios Core may not restart if the import directory contains malformed data.