I'm trying to turn our Icinga spaghetti into something more manageable and less repetitive. So far features like templates, object inheritance, multiple inheritance, hostgroups, servicegroups, etc have been meeting my needs, but I'm stuck on one aspect.
TL;DR: How do I tell Icinga that if that host is a member of a particular hostgroup I want to add a new contact group to all member hosts and services, even services defined against a different hostgroup that the host is also a member of?
I have two orthogonal sets of hostgroups - one for the host type, which is associated with services and service dependencies associated with the host type, e.g. "PostgreSQL servers". Another set of groups identifies areas of responsibility for nodes and who needs to care about each node.
I need to apply contact specifications to services according to the hostgroups identifying areas of responsibility - and want to do so without having to override each service for each (host-type, area-of-responsibility) hostgroup pair.
So, say I define a hostgroup "postgresql_servers" and associated service "postgresql_connection":
define hostgroup {
hostgroup_name postgres_servers
alias All PostgreSQL servers
}
define service {
use some_service_template
hostgroup_name postgres_servers
contact_groups support_engineers_notifications
service_description POSTGRES_CONNECTION
check_command check_dummy!2!"Passive check failed"
}
and then I have a hostgroup "servers_for_bob" and a contact "bob", which aren't yet associated with each other:
define hostgroup {
hostgroup_name servers_for_bob,
alias These are for Bob
}
define contact {
contact_name bob
alias bob: Bob B.
use some_contact_template
}
define contactgroup {
contactgroup_name team_bob
members bob
}
Now, it's easy to make a host a member of both hostgroups:
define host {
use some_host_template
host_name buildingthings.example.com
hostgroups servers_for_bob, postgres_servers
alias The first thing bob built
}
... and in the process it will get all the services defined against postgres_servers, like POSTGRES_CONNECTION. But service notifications will only go to support_engineers_notifications as defined on the base service POSTGRES_CONNECTION.
Now I want to notify team_bob when the host has issues or any of its services has a problem. Without redeclaring all those services.
For the host its self I can use merge rules in object inheritance in contact_groups e.g.
define host {
use some_host_template
host_name buildingthings.example.com
hostgroups servers_for_bob, postgres_servers
alias The first thing bob built
contact_groups +team_bob
}
and for more hosts, can use multiple host template inheritance to reduce repetition.
However, AFAIK that won't cause the services that were implicitly defined by making the host a member of postgres_servers send notifications to team_bob too.
Here's the topology:
+--------------------------------------+ +-----------+
| | | Contact: |
| Hostgroup: | | Team Bob |
| postgresql_servers <--????--+ |
| | ^^^^ | |
| | how? +-----------+
| |
| +----------------------------------------+
| | | |
| | | |
| | +-------------------------+ | |
| | |-------------------------| | |
| | || || | |
| | || Host buildingthings || | |
| | || hostgroups: || | |
| | || postgres_servers, || | |
| | || servers_for_bob || | |
| | || || | |
| | || || | |
| | || || | |
| | || || | |
| | || || | |
| | |-------------------------| | |
| | +-------------------------+ | |
| | | |
+--------------------------------------+ | +----------------------+
| | | |
| | | Service: |
| <-------+ POSTGRES_CONNECTION |
| | | |
| Hostgroup | | |
| servers_for_bob | +----------------------+
| ^ |
+----------------------------------------+ +---------+------------+
| | More services... |
+----------+ |
+----------------------+
(thanks http://asciiflow.com/)
How do I tell Icinga that if that host is a member of the hostgroup servers_for_bob I want to add the contact bob to all member hosts and services, even those defined implicitly via hostgroup inheritance?
I've seen vague mentions about using host- and service- escalations to work around this, but haven't been able to figure out how.
It seems like this would be a common requirement, but I'm not sure where to go from here. Help?
