Categories and severities

Categories allow you to:

• organize hosts or services, so as to define user rights on them using ACLs
• filter the view in the Resources status page
• classify the hosts and services within sub-groups in MBI reports.
• define types of objects in the Centreon MAP module.

A special type of category is called severity. Severities can be used to achieve all of the above, but also to:

• sort the view on page Resources Status by severity level, e.g. to show the most important alerts first. (Severities are shown in the S column in the Resources Status page.)

• filter data in the Host monitoring, Service monitoring and Open Tickets widgets in custom views.

Hosts category

Go to the Configuration > Hosts > Categories menu and click on Add.

• The Host Category Name and Alias fields contain respectively the name and the alias of the category of host.
• The Linked hosts list allows us to add hosts to the category.
• If a host template is added to Linked host template list all the hosts which inherit from this Model belong to this category.
• The Severity type box signifies that the category of hosts has a criticality level.
• The Level and Icon fields define a criticality level and an associated icon respectively.
• The Status and Comment fields allow us to enable or disable the category of host and to comment on it.

Services category

Go to the Configuration > Services > Categories menu and click on Add.

• The Name and Description fields define the name and the description of the category of service.
• If a service template is added to Service Template Descriptions list all the services which inherit from this template belong to this category.
• The Severity type box signifies that the category of service has a criticality level.
• The Level and Icon fields define a criticality level and an associated icon respectively.
• The Status field allows us to enable or disable the category of services.

Severities

Creating a severity

To create a severity:

1. Go to Configuration > Hosts > Categories or Configuration > Services > Categories and then click Add.
2. Fill in the Name and Alias fields, then check Severity type.
3. Define a level for the severity (a number that will be used to sort hosts or services in the Resources Status page), and an icon which will appear in the S column in the Resources Status page.
4. Click Save. The severity appears in the list of severities.

Applying the severity to a host or service

1. Edit the host or service (go to Configuration > Hosts > Hosts or to Configuration > Services > Services by host and then click on the host or service).
2. On the Extended Info tab, in the Monitoring Engine section, select the severity you want from the Severity level list.
3. Click Save.
4. Deploy the configuration. In the Resources Status page, the icon for the severity appears in column S. A tooltip shows the level and name of the severity. If you click the column header, the view is sorted according to the severity level.