Analyzing the Checkmk site configuration

Once your Checkmk server has been set up and configured, sooner or later questions will come up: Can the configuration be performed more quickly? Can it be optimized? Can the system be made more secure?

One approach to answering these questions is to review and consequently optimize the site setup on the Checkmk server. The more performant your system is, the faster and more effectively it works. So the more reliably you can secure your site, the more confident you can be when working with it.

Checkmk quickly and clearly analyzes the essential parameters associated with the current site as well as any attached sites in the case of a distributed monitoring.

The hosts and services within your site(s) are not affected by these checks, they are still shown in the views of hosts and services. The results of the checks for the site covered here are displayed on the Setup > Maintenance > Analyze configuration page.

The above screenshot shows the checks that are executed by default for a single site in Checkmk Raw. However, this is not the whole story, as more checks may well be offered. What these are depends, for example, on whether you have installed Checkmk Raw or one of the commercial editions, whether your site is used in a distributed monitoring, whether a specific rule has been set up, an LDAP connection exists, a global setting has been defined — or even the value of an option in a rule. Which check is relevant for your site — Checkmk takes care of that.

The analyzed site data is divided into different categories as checks. Each check has a colored status display. A check can have the following states after analysis:

Let’s consider the Backup configured check with two sites in a distributed monitoring:

This check is in a WARN state, so an button appears after the WARN for acknowledging this. This button also appears for checks in the CRIT state. Acknowledgement causes the yellow or red color of the state to disappear. The entry itself remains, but becomes visually more discreet. If the check is acknowledged, the button changes to . This button can be used to cancel the acknowledgement.

In general, it makes sense to check the system environment for all parameters. However, if you do not want to run individual checks (again), you can disable any of the checks by clicking on the associated button. For example, turn off the Backup configured check if your organization uses a different solution for backup creation.

For each check, clicking on the associated button will give you more details on the detected values, an assessment of the status, as well as hints for optimization.

Much can be readily understood and acted upon based on this. This User Guide — as well as other sources — provides additional information on the following topics:

In addition, the article on Security provides an overview of other security-related matters relevant to Checkmk.