Nagios - Instead of a ping check to see if a host is alive, use http instead

Sometimes (often) ICMP is blocked, so you can't ping check your hosts to see if they are alive.

You can add this to commands.cfg and hosts.cfg for those hosts to check via http instead.

commands.cfg

define command {
   command_name check-host-alive-by-http
   command_line $USER1$/check_http -H $HOSTADDRESS
}

hosts.cfg

define host{
host_name hostname.com
address ip.address
alias hostnamealias
use networking_machines_template
check_command check-host-alive-by-http
}