Nagios Support Forum

We are setting up notifications in Nagios. We have a primary and and a secondary support person for each group. So taking window production host group, we want to page the primary twice with 15 min between each page. If no acknowledgement then we want to page the secondary. So if i am understanding the documentation would I do the following:

Set up the first escalation: 'Escalation for Windows Production - Primary.'
First Notification = 0 Last Notification = 2
Notification Interval = 15
Escalation Period = 24x7.

Set up the second escalation: 'Escalation for Windows Production - Backup.'
First Notification = 2 Last Notification = 4
Notification Interval = 15
Escalation Period = 24x7.

My understanding is there is a automatic 5 minute delay before the first notification goes out because when Nagios gets the first alert it checks 4 more times at one minute intervals. So the total time the host would be down from the first escalation would be 35 minutes. Also if the host template has notifications set up, Nagios will ignore them if escalations are in place. True?

Thanks,
Greg

Hello, @gregwhite. You could just use 1 escalation instead of 2. You can assign the host to the primary contact and set the notification interval to 15. Then set up an escalation:

Escalation for Windows Production - Backup.
First Notification = 2 Last Notification = 4
Notification Interval = 15
Escalation Period = 24x7

Also if the host template has notifications set up, Nagios will ignore them if escalations are in place. True?

Yes, escalations take precedence over regular notification options including the ones in the template.

Ok, it's that last part in your reply that is still fuzzy.
In your example, you are defining notification locally for a host - correct?
We are using templates so we can apply settings including notifications to hundreds of servers. So if I understand what you are saying, when we set up escalations that will cause Nagios to ignore the notifications we have set up in our template. If that is true, then I will need to set up two escalations as I had defined in my original post - true? The first and last notification being 0 and 2 for the primary and then for the backup escalation the first and last setting will be 2 and 4.

Hi @gregwhite,

Here's the documentation for how notification escalations work in detail.

Here's another link with an alternative explanation for each option

In short - both your original setup and @npolovenko's suggestion are slightly different from what you want. When there are "holes" in the notification escalations (for instance, if your escalations only cover notifications 2 through 4), the default contacts are used. With @npolovenko's suggestion, the default contact would get alerted for notifications 1 and 5+. As you currently have it, I would set first_notification to 1 for the primary, and to 3 for the secondary. Keep in mind that no one would continue getting alerted after the 4th page if you only use escalations like this.