Service De-Duplication Using Free Variables
Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2021 12:38 pm
I seem to have a bit of a conundrum on my hands.
We have just purchased the enterprise version of Nagios and have begun moving hosts into the Nagios XI Console. When all is said and done, the environment will have 2-3k hosts belonging to a number of different host groups. Most of these servers are running the same linux OS, and we are monitoring the same services on all the hosts (more or less).
Here is what my thought process has been to this point:
- With a large number of hosts in the environment, we need a way to load these hosts without re-creating the services for each host or host group.
- since they are all running the same linux OS, we can use the same parent host group to assign basic services to all the hosts, and use a child host group to add services as needed.
- For example: "Parent Host Group X" with services 1,2,3. Then I have added "Child Host Group A" and "Child Host Group B" to Parent Host Group X in order to assign services 1,2, and 3 to the two child host groups. Then I can configure service 4 on Child Host Group B, as service 4 will not be monitored on Child Host Group A.
This configuration results in all hosts assigned to Child Host Group B receiving services 1-4 and hosts assigned to Child Host Group A receiving services 1-3. Only 4 services
However, a problem arose that I did not foresee: We page out to an alert manager which parses the free variables associated with the service to determine what on-call team will receive the alert. If there is only one service and it is assigned to a number of different host groups, it seems that we are unable to manipulate free variables in order to send the alert to different teams (via our alert manager). Is there any configuration that would support this? I would rather not copy/paste 6 services and change the free variables each time I need to create a host group.
Perhaps I have configured the environment incorrectly. We are still in the early stages, so re-hauling the environment will not be a huge process if that is what is necessary. I want to make sure the practices are scalable and right now it seems my only option is copy/paste.
Thank you so much in advance for your time!!
We have just purchased the enterprise version of Nagios and have begun moving hosts into the Nagios XI Console. When all is said and done, the environment will have 2-3k hosts belonging to a number of different host groups. Most of these servers are running the same linux OS, and we are monitoring the same services on all the hosts (more or less).
Here is what my thought process has been to this point:
- With a large number of hosts in the environment, we need a way to load these hosts without re-creating the services for each host or host group.
- since they are all running the same linux OS, we can use the same parent host group to assign basic services to all the hosts, and use a child host group to add services as needed.
- For example: "Parent Host Group X" with services 1,2,3. Then I have added "Child Host Group A" and "Child Host Group B" to Parent Host Group X in order to assign services 1,2, and 3 to the two child host groups. Then I can configure service 4 on Child Host Group B, as service 4 will not be monitored on Child Host Group A.
This configuration results in all hosts assigned to Child Host Group B receiving services 1-4 and hosts assigned to Child Host Group A receiving services 1-3. Only 4 services
However, a problem arose that I did not foresee: We page out to an alert manager which parses the free variables associated with the service to determine what on-call team will receive the alert. If there is only one service and it is assigned to a number of different host groups, it seems that we are unable to manipulate free variables in order to send the alert to different teams (via our alert manager). Is there any configuration that would support this? I would rather not copy/paste 6 services and change the free variables each time I need to create a host group.
Perhaps I have configured the environment incorrectly. We are still in the early stages, so re-hauling the environment will not be a huge process if that is what is necessary. I want to make sure the practices are scalable and right now it seems my only option is copy/paste.
Thank you so much in advance for your time!!