Flapping

Flapping occurs when a monitored entity, such as a service or host, changes state too frequently, making the cause and severity of the incident unclear. For example, flapping can be indicative of configuration issues (such as thresholds set too low), troublesome services, or real network problems.

In BigPanda, an incident enters the flapping state when one or more of the associated alerts are flapping. By default, an alert is considered to be flapping when it has changed states more than 4 times in one hour. If you need to configure custom logic (number of state changes within a period of time) for your organization, contact BigPanda Support and request a product change.

When an incident enters the flapping state, all subscribed users are notified and no additional state change notifications are sent. Subscribed users still receive a daily email reminding them about the incident. An incident exits the flapping state when all associated alerts stop flapping (no longer meet the criteria for number of state changes in a period of time). BigPanda checks the flapping criteria every 15 minutes.