I'll be the first to admit that my documentation is not the best in the world. In order to help you better understand how NetSaint works I've provided some notes here. This isn't very extensive yet, but will be improved in later versions once everything stabilizes a bit more and I have time to catch up.
Determining Status and Reachability of Network Hosts
Click here to read up on how NetSaint determines the status and reachability of networked hosts in the process of its monitoring. This document also describes what "parent" hosts are (as defined in host definitions), and how they affect the way in which host reachability is determined.
Click here to read up on how service and host notifications work. It describes when and how notifications occur, as well as the various filters that must be passed before they can actually be sent out to individual contacts.
Click here to read up on what "soft" and "hard" states are, when they occur, and the importance of the role that they play in the monitoring logic.
Click here to read up on how the use of time periods affects service checks, service notifications, and host notifications. This document also describes potential problems you may run into when using time periods. If you are using time periods that don't cover a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week span, you need to read this!
I've included some basic logic diagrams that attempt to show the basics of how NetSaint does its monitoring. A lot of detail has been left out and things aren't always as clean cut as they would appear from the diagrams, but this should at least give you an idea of how things work.
Diagram | Description |
Top level logic | This is a view of the top level logic used in NetSaint. All functionality stems from this, so look at it first. |
Service check problem logic | Outlines what steps are taken when a service with a non-OK state is encountered. |
Service check okay/recovery logic | Outlines what steps are taken when a service check returns an OK state. |
Service notification logic | Outlines how service notifications are sent. |
Service event handler logic | Outlines how service event handlers are run. |
Route check logic | Outlines how the status and reachability of remote hosts is determined. |
Host notification logic | Outlines how host notifications are sent. |
Host state handler logic | A top level outline of how different host states are handled. |
Host event handler logic | Outlines how host event handlers are run. |