Managing Nagios Config Files

I've been using Nagios in my professional life for about 8 years now.  Well, it was called Netsaint back in the early days, but its still pretty much the same utility.  

One of the hardest things when getting started with Nagios is learning to work with the configuration files.  In the more recent versions of Nagios, this has gotten a little simpler with the introduction of templates.  Now in version 3.0, the templates are even easier to use.

I always just modify the sample config files, and add my own templates for contacts, hosts, and services.  This way I can give visibility to each group of servers based on a contact group that is specified in the host definition.  

You can further simplify your config by using hostgroups appropriately.  When properly grouped hosts are together, you don't have to worry about typing every hostname into every service check.

More info can be grabbed at www.nagios.org.