Introduction

The basic jobs of checks are described here. 

When Are Checks Performed?

Checks are done by the Shinken Enterprise daemon at regular intervals, as defined by the check interval and retry interval check definitions.

Parallelization of Checks

Scheduled checks are run in parallel by the pollers. 

check States

checks that are run can be in one of four different states:

  • OK
  • WARNING
  • UNKNOWN
  • CRITICAL
 

check State Determination

Checks are performed by plugins, which can return a state of OK, WARNING, UNKNOWN, or CRITICAL. These plugin states directly translate to check states.

For example, a plugin which returns a WARNING state will cause a check to have a WARNING state.

 

checks State Changes

When Shinken Enterprise run the status of checks, it will be able to detect when a check changes between OK, WARNING, UNKNOWN, and CRITICAL states and take appropriate action. These state changes result in different state types (HARD or SOFT), which can trigger event handlers to be run and notifications to be sent out.

Check state changes can also trigger on-demand host checks. Detecting and dealing with state changes is what Shinken Enterprise Enterprise is all about.

When check change state too frequently they are considered to be “flapping". Shinken Enterprise can detect when checks start flapping, and can cancel notifications until flapping stops and the check's state stabilizes. More information on the flap detection logic can be found on the flapping page.