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Netdata Alerts in Week One: What to Keep, Tune, Silence, or Disable—and How to Route Them

By Freedom251 Team · · 5 min read

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In your first week with Netdata, treat its alerts as an inventory to review—not a list that should automatically notify you. Keep checks that prompt a useful response, tune noisy conditions that still matter, silence notifications when you want checks to continue quietly, and disable checks only when they should stop running. Then route Agent notifications to Slack, Discord, or ntfy through health_alarm_notify.conf.

Netdata describes its stock health.d/ directory as containing hundreds of alert definitions, but does not give an exact count or a universal starter list. The right choices depend on the workloads and systems you monitor. Netdata’s alerts and notifications overview explains the alert system.

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How to decide what to keep, tune, silence, or disable

Start with alerts that actually fire on the hosts you care about. For each one, identify the host or chart, its condition and severity, whether it reflects a meaningful operational problem, and whether someone needs an immediate notification. A check can be useful even when it does not deserve an urgent message.

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  • Keep an alert when its condition merits investigation or action and its notifications reach someone who can respond.
  • Tune it when the condition matters but the current threshold is noisy or poorly matched to the workload.
  • Silence it when you want the check and alert events to continue, but do not want notifications sent.
  • Disable it only when you do not want the health check evaluated.

These are operational choices, not a Netdata-prescribed universal alert list. Use observed workload behavior and the consequences of missed or unnecessary alerts to guide decisions.

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Inspect what is firing before changing thresholds

Review active and recent alerts on the nodes and charts that matter to your operation. An alert’s severity alone does not establish whether it warrants a page: consider what the condition means in your environment and what action it should trigger. Netdata supports custom health definitions and UI-based configuration as well as stock definitions.

For stock alert definitions and configuration options, see Configure Health Alerts.

Tune a stock alert safely

For a persistent change, create a user override with the same name as the stock alert. A template changes matching instances; an alarm targets one specific instance. User definitions are processed before stock definitions, and user configuration is intended to survive Agent updates, unlike the stock directory, which is replaced during updates. Netdata documents the override behavior in Overriding Stock Alerts.

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  1. From the Netdata config directory, open or create the relevant user configuration with sudo ./edit-config health.d/<file>.
  2. Use the same alert name as the stock definition. Choose a template for matching instances or an alarm for one instance.
  3. Adjust the condition to fit observed behavior and operational impact. Netdata’s CPU expression examples illustrate syntax; their sample thresholds are not recommendations for your machine.
  4. Reload health configuration with sudo netdatacli reload-health.

Make the smallest change that addresses the noise, then observe whether it still detects conditions that should prompt action.

Silence notifications without stopping checks

For a persistent configuration change, set to: silent in the alert definition, then reload health configuration. The check remains active, and its events remain visible, but notifications are suppressed.

For a temporary maintenance window, use the health management API to silence selected alerts at runtime. Netdata documents the distinction plainly: “Silence alert notifications. Alert conditions will be evaluated, the alerts will appear in the log and the Netdata UI will show the alerts as active, but no notifications will be sent.” The API can select alerts by name or template, chart, context, and host. See Health API Calls.

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Disable checks only when evaluation should stop

The API’s DISABLE action stops matching health checks from being evaluated; their events are not added to the alert log. Use RESET to restore normal behavior after the maintenance period. The API is protected by an authorization token and, by default, accepts management requests only from localhost. Avoid broadening remote access casually.

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For persistent global filtering, enabled alarms in netdata.conf can exclude selected names followed by a trailing *, or allow only named alerts by omitting the wildcard. Put exclusions first and a single wildcard at the end. After changing netdata.conf, restart the Agent; sudo netdatacli reload-health reloads health files, not netdata.conf.

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Route Agent notifications to Slack, Discord, or ntfy

The Agent integrations are configured in health_alarm_notify.conf. Slack and Discord use incoming webhooks; ntfy uses a server-and-topic URL. The setup steps below describe documented configuration paths, not a comparative test of delivery speed or reliability.

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Slack: Agent-dispatched webhook

  1. Create a Slack app and an incoming webhook, and choose the channel where messages should appear.
  2. In health_alarm_notify.conf, enable SEND_SLACK, set SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL to the webhook, and set DEFAULT_RECIPIENT_SLACK to the destination channel. Netdata allows the channel with or without #.
  3. Use the documented alarm-notify.sh test command to check the notification mechanism.

Keep webhook URLs private. See Slack — Agent Dispatched Notifications.

Slack: centralized Netdata Cloud integration

This is a separate route from Agent-dispatched Slack. Netdata’s documented Cloud integration requires a Netdata Cloud account, Space admin access, a paid plan, and a Slack app with an incoming webhook. Configure it in Space settings under Alerts & Notifications, then select rooms and notification types. Do not apply these Cloud prerequisites to the Agent webhook route. Details are in Slack — Centralized Cloud Notifications.

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Discord: Agent-dispatched webhook

  1. Create a Discord incoming webhook for the channel where you want alerts.
  2. In health_alarm_notify.conf, enable SEND_DISCORD, set DISCORD_WEBHOOK_URL, and set DEFAULT_RECIPIENT_DISCORD. The documented integration also allows role-specific channel recipients.
  3. To test a selected role’s notification mechanism, follow Netdata’s guide: run its test command as the netdata user with notification debugging enabled.

See Discord — Agent Dispatched Notifications. Treat webhook URLs as credentials.

ntfy: Agent-dispatched server and topic

  1. In health_alarm_notify.conf, enable SEND_NTFY and set DEFAULT_RECIPIENT_NTFY to the ntfy server-and-topic URL.
  2. Use multiple recipient URLs or role-specific server/topic destinations if your routing needs require them.
  3. If authentication is needed, configure the documented username, password, or access-token settings. The guide specifically describes username and password use with self-hosted ntfy.

Self-hosting ntfy is optional. See ntfy — Agent Dispatched Notifications, and keep credentials private.

Choose a route based on where and how you operate

Route Where messages go Setup detail When to consider it
Agent-dispatched Slack Slack channel Incoming webhook and Agent settings in health_alarm_notify.conf When the Agent should send to a Slack channel
Netdata Cloud Slack Selected rooms and notification types Cloud account, Space admin access, paid plan, and Slack app with incoming webhook When you want the documented centralized Cloud integration
Agent-dispatched Discord Discord channel Incoming webhook and Agent settings; role-specific recipients are documented When the Agent should send to Discord channels, including role-specific destinations
Agent-dispatched ntfy ntfy topic Server-topic URL and Agent settings; optional authentication and self-hosting When topic-based routing or a self-hosted ntfy server fits your setup

Netdata’s cited guides document setup, but do not establish comparative uptime, delivery latency, pricing across all three services, or notification quality. Choose by destination, access to the required credentials, role-routing needs, and whether you want to operate an ntfy server.

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