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How to make the same change on many different objects

Related to Copied

Making batch changes across multiple hosts, services, contacts, or other objects in Monitor.

Problem Copied

• You would like to make a change affecting more than one object.

Possible Solution(s) Copied

• The recommended way is to use either groups or templates.
  • Groups do not have attributes themselves but serve as logical units to distribute child objects. For example, a host group does not have any host attributes (like retry_interval), but since it can own services, you can use host group memberships to change what services belong to hosts in that group. Ensure the service(s) in question are owned by the group and not a specific host, then add and remove hosts from the group as necessary.
  • Templates are used to propagate actual attributes between objects, but they will only apply if the object itself does not override the value. For example, if a host object does not specify the optional retry_interval value, but that host uses a template that does, the template value will be used instead.

Examples Copied

• You may want to use groups in a situation where you have N amount of host objects that are all running similar services. For example, if you have 10 database servers running the same checks with minor differences (IP and thresholds differ, for example), you probably want a host group owning the services themselves. By adding the hosts to that group, they will get the common services.
• You may want to use templates in a situation where a group of objects needs to share certain attributes. For example, if only three of your database servers are actually in production, you may want to ensure that these are checked more frequently, have a different set of contacts, and perform fewer retries before notifying. In this case, you can set these hosts to use their own template where these attributes are applied, and then leave the attributes empty on the objects themselves.

Alternate solution Copied

In some cases, you really need to do N amount of distinct changes on a lot of objects without using inheritance or templates. In that case, you can modify an object, click “Propagate”, select the attributes you wish to propagate, then click “Propagate selected settings”. This allows you to, for example, change what template is used for N amount of objects.

Related Articles Copied

• Manage hosts and services
• Configuration page