Understanding Notification Settings in Nagios XI
Shamas Demoret
Technical Content Manager
Nagios XI is capable of notifying you when a wide variety of events occur in relation to your monitored hosts and services. Hosts (aka nodes) in Nagios are primary objects with IP addresses or FQDNs. Services are metrics monitored on hosts such as CPU usage on a server or virtual machine, port throughput on a switch, or SSL certificate expiration on a website.
This article provides an overview of key event types which can be used to generate notifications, along with links to related documentation.
Host and Service Event Types
Nagios XI can send you notifications on the following occurrences and state changes:
Host Settings
- Host Acknowledgement – this indicates that a user has acknowledged the current problem with the host, which will either suppress further notifications until the object changes state, or until the object recovers if “Sticky Acknowledgement” is chosen.
- Host Recovery – the host has returned to an OK state from a problem state.
- Host Down – the host is not responding.
- Host Unreachable – the host cannot be reached, because an intermediary parent host which must be routed through to check it is down.
- Host Flapping – this indicates that the state of the host object has fluctuated significantly over the last 21 checks run by Nagios. You can find additional details on the related logic here.
- Host Downtime – the host has been placed in administrative downtime by a user, suppressing notifications.
Service Settings
- Service Acknowledgement – this indicates that a user has acknowledged the current problem with the service, which will either suppress further notifications until the object changes state, or until the object recovers if “Sticky Acknowledgement” is chosen.
- Service Recovery – the service has recovered back to an OK state.
- Service Warning – the service has exceeded your Warning threshold.
- Service Unknown – this typically indicates an issue with the check plugin being used to check the status.
- Service Critical – the service has exceeded your Critical alert thresholds.
- Service Flapping – this indicates that the state of the service object has fluctuated significantly over the last 21 checks run by Nagios. You can find additional details here.
- Service Downtime – the service has been placed in administrative downtime by a user, suppressing notifications.
Documentation
You can learn more about setting up notifications here:
Full details on managing and configuring Nagios XI can be found in the Admin Guide:
