Configuring parents for devices in nagios

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In nagios we can configure parents of hosts, so that if parent is down the childrens which depend on it are not checked. This is useful so that if switch is down the switches and machines behind it are not checked. This also helps in generating good graphical map of dependencies in nagios GUI

To configure parent just one line in host definition stating parents of the host is enough. Example config is

define host{
        use             generic-switch          ; Inherit default values from a template
        host_name       10.4.4.251              ; The name we're giving to this switch
        alias           Linksys SGE 2000 switch kept in GH ground floor, This is distribution switch for GH.    ; A longer name associated with the switch
        address         10.4.4.251              ; IP address of the switch
        hostgroups      switches,linksys-switches               ; Host groups this switch is associated with
        parents         172.16.30.1
        }

Here 172.16.30.1 is treated as parent for 10.4.4.251, so that if 172.16.30.1 is down then 10.4.4.251 is not checked and assumed to be down.

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