Introduction

While Nagios Core is still very useful when configured to monitor only a simple list of hosts and services, it includes some optional directives that allow defining some structural and functional properties of the monitored network; specifically, how the hosts and services interrelate. Describing this structure in the configuration allows some additional intelligent behavior in the monitoring and notification that Nagios Core performs.

There are two main approaches to working with network structure in Nagios Core:

• Host parent definitions allow an administrator to define a hierarchy of connectivity to monitored hosts from the "point of view" of the Nagios Core server. An example might be a server with the monitored address in another subnet linked to the Nagios Core server by a router. If the router enters a DOWN state, it triggers Nagios Core's host reachability logic to automatically determine which hosts become inaccessible, and flags these as UNREACHABLE rather than DOWN, allowing...