Active Checks
Introduction
Shinken is capable of monitoring able to monitor hosts and checks in two ways: actively and passively. Using Active checks are is the most common method for monitoring hosts and checks. The main features of actives checks are as followsthe following:
- Active checks are initiated by the Shinken poller process
- Active checks are run on a regularly regular scheduled basis
How Are Active Checks Performed?
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Active checks are initiated by the check logic in the Shinken daemon. When Shinken Enterprise needs to check the status of a host or a check, it will execute a plugin and pass it show the information about what needs to be checked. The plugin will then check the operational state of the host or check and report the results back to the Shinken daemon. The scheduler daemon will process the results of the host or check check and take the appropriate action as if necessary (e.g. send notifications, ask for event handlers, etc).
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Regularly scheduled checks occur at intervals equaling either the "check_interval" or the "retry_interval" in your host or check definitions, depending on what : type of state the host or check is in. If a host or check is in a HARD state, it will be actively checked at intervals equal to the "check_interval" option. If it is in a SOFT state, it will be checked at intervals equal to the retry_interval option.
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In most cases you'll use Shinken Enterprise to monitor your hosts and checks using regularly scheduled :ref:`active checks <thebasics/activechecks>`. Active checks can be used to "poll" a device or check for status information every so often. Shinken also supports a way to monitor hosts and checks passively instead of actively. They key features of passive checks are as followsthe following:
- Passive checks are initiated and performed by external applications/processes
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- "SNMP" traps and security alerts. You never know how many (if any) traps or alerts you'll receive in a given time frame, so it's not feasible possible to just monitor their status every few minutes.
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- Shinken will get results each second and scan the check result queue. Each check check result that is found in the queue is processed in the same manner way - regardless of whether whether the check was active or passive. Shinken may send out notifications, log alerts, etc. depending on the check result information.
The processing of active and passive check results is essentially identicalthe same. This allows for seamless integration of status information from external applications with Shinken.
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If you want to disable processing of passive checks on a global basis, set theacceptthe accept_passive_check_checks directive to 0.
If you would like want to disable passive checks for just a few hosts or checks, use the "passive_checks_enabled" directive in the host and/or check definitions to do so.
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External applications can submit passive check check results to Shinken by writing a PROCESS_check_CHECK_RESULT external command to the external command pipe, which is essentially a file handle that you write to as you would do with a file.
The format of the command is as followsthe following : "[<timestamp>] PROCESS_check_CHECK_RESULT;<host_name>;<svc_description>;<return_code>;<plugin_output>" where...
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