In the Enterprise edition, we have a nice WATO ruleset “Recurring downtimes” (both for hosts and services).
But one can also just create a downtime for some host (or service) and activate the check box for “recurring downtime” directly in the action menu.
This ad-hoc approach via command does not create a corresponding WATO rule.
There is probably a technical reason for this: just instruct the running core to build the downtime schedule, instead of modifiying the WATO config and activate the changes.
Still, I have found this to be a bit troublesome because:
- this ad-hoc approach does not offer all the options of the ruleset: there is no “end after (date)”
- the result is somewhat “transient”, can not be seen/found and verified/changed as easily
- the command based downtime can only be set for hosts/services that exist at the time of entry while the ruleset can include the whole range of conditions, thus making it much more flexible, possibly matching hosts that will be created in the future.
I would like to suggest to
- have the command-based recurring downtimes also create a corresponding WATO rule - perhaps make this a checkbox option (with default on or ideally with a configurable default)
- or, if this is not easy to implement, at least give the user a clear hint “you can also set recurring downtimes with more features in a WATO ruleset” (and a link to the WATO page).
From the user’s point of view, this would be comparable to the “disable service” button in service discovery that also creates a matching WATO rule. (although this is probably totally different from a technical point of view)
Thanks!