About Service Groups

Service Groups are used to group one or more services together for the purpose of simplifying notifications. When a service goes down, becomes unreachable, or recovers, Nagios will find which service group(s) the service is a member of, get the contact group for each of those service groups, and notify all contacts associated with those contact groups. Additionally, the usage of service groups simplifies access control, status displays, scheduling maintenance, multi-server commands, and reports. A service can be assigned to one or more service groups.

Configuring Service Groups

Tips

  • You can Modify an existing host group updating its members, contact groups, or escalation trees.
  • Members are the services to be included in the service group, you can add services using Add Service(s) or Add Host(s).
  • The Service escalation tree selection is also optional and indicates all services on each host in this host group receive the same service escalation tree.
  1. Select Configuration > Nagios Monitoring > Services, Service Groups, and New.
  2. In the Service Group screen, enter the properties:
    • Name:  [Required] Name of the service group, (e.g., dbservices).
    • Alias: [Required] This directive is is used to define a longer name or description used to identify the service group. It is provided in order to allow you to more easily identify a particular service group, (e.g., Database Services).
    • Notes: [Optional] This filed is intended to describe common features of the service group (e.g., the usage, functions, or specific application software being monitored). This information is shown on the service group detail page within the Status application.
    • Host/Service: [Required] This is a list of the descriptions of services (and the names of their corresponding hosts) that should be included in this group.
    • Service Escalation: This is a list of defined service escalations that can be assigned to this service group.
      creating a service group
  3. Click Add to go to the Service Group screen.
  4. Select the Host drop-down box to select a host. Available services will be listed.
  5. Choose a service to add and click Add Service(s). The host and service columns above will displayed your selections. To remove a selected service click the X corresponding to the line to be deleted.
  6. Select the Service drop-down box to select a service, available hosts will be listed.
  7. Choose a host to add and click Add Host(s). The host and service columns above will display your selections. To remove a selected host click the X corresponding to the line to be deleted.
  8. Select Save to save the service group. Delete removes the current service group, and Rename is used to change the name of the current service group. You will be notified on the next screen that the service groups has been updated. After setting up host and/or service groups you're ready to setup notifications and escalations.
    adding services

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