Learning Nagios 4

Understanding escalations

A common problem with resolving problems is that a host or a service may have unclear ownership. Often, there is no single person responsible for a host or service, which makes resolution of the problem difficult. It is also typical to have a service with subtle dependencies on other things, which by themselves are small enough not to be monitored by Nagios. In such a case, it is good to include lower management in the escalations, so that they are able to focus on problems that haven't been resolved in a timely manner.

Here is a good example: a database server might fail because a small Perl script, which is run prior to actual start and cleans things up, has entered an infinite loop. The owner of this machine is notified. ...