Dependencies or Parent/Child Relationships
Allow devices to be dependent on one another. If a router goes down, the switch behind it will most likely go down or have an error as well.
Forum Discussion
1 minute ago, LJ Bryson said:
Dependencies (manual, if needed) are more important than any automation. ...especially if it means waiting 6 more months while the complex automated dependency mapping is done.
Please, just get us dependencies.
Multiple "parents" is necessary, as well. (e.g., a VM is dependent on the Host on which it runs, the storage on which it resides, storage switches, upstream switches, etc.
Another aspect that is often missed: If the parent is checked every 60 seconds, and the child goes offline, check the parent-path prior to alerting on the child. I believe that Nagios works this way, but Zabbix does not (and it is a problem in Zabbix).
Also, with respect to multiple parent dependencies, this is primarily for alerting -- not for monitoring. In other words, if a router goes down, only alert on the router (not the 300 hosts behind it). But, still show the 300 hosts as offline/unavailable (perhaps gray, not red?).
Finally, device dependencies alone are not the end -- service dependencies are needed. ie:
if host X is not pingable, then don't alert on the 30 other checks (including web checks) that are running on that host -- perhaps bundle the dependent alerts in the same 1 email as "affected dependent services." Likewise, one MySQL goes down with 10 apache instances pointing at it for some web app -- alert on the DB, and include the list of other affected httpds in the same alert (with most critical first).
This would be even more powerful than Nagios.
