Help reviewing current configuration

Hi all,

I've worked hours and hours on trying to get these notifications
working properly and I'm still confused. I really hoped someone could
review my configuration to determine where I might be doing something
wrong, and provide any suggestions for improvement. I have a handful
of critical servers that I'd like to be notified by within two or
three minutes of there being a problem, such as the web server having
been stopped.

It's my understand that I first define this as a service, while in
parallel define varying types of escalations - a regular escalation
and a critical escalation. Both of these rely on checking the host for
service issues max_check_attempts times, and when that number is
reached, an event trigger occurs and the service is escalated. Perhaps
I don't understand the link between how a service is in a failed state
and a serviceescalation directive is initiated. How are they connected
or linked?

If I have the first notification for an escalated service set to 1,
and the last set to 10, with a notification_interval set to 2, there
would effectively be two minutes between each notification, correct?

I've included a few macros that I've built below, along with the
services to which they belong, and hoped someone could review them to
see where I might be going wrong.

With the configuration below, it seems I'm only notified at the 10m
mark, which I guess is the notification_interval set in the
standard-service-24x7 macro. The service never seems to escalate to
critical-services, where I should receive an alert after every second
check of the host.

define service {
        name                            standard-service-24x7
        active_checks_enabled           1
        passive_checks_enabled          1
        parallelize_check               1
        obsess_over_service             1
        check_freshness                 0
        notifications_enabled           1
        event_handler_enabled           1
        flap_detection_enabled          1
        process_perf_data               1
        retain_status_information       1
        retain_nonstatus_information    1
        max_check_attempts              4
        check_interval                  1
        retry_interval                  1
        is_volatile                     0
        check_period                    24x7
        contact_groups                  admins
        notification_interval           10
        notification_period             24x7
        notification_options            w,u,c,r
        register                        0
}

# service for standard-service-24x7 macro above
define service {
        use                     standard-service-24x7
        host_name               dedicatedtech
        service_description     SMTP
        check_command           check_smtp
}

# escalation definition for a critical service
# admins-escal has several email addresses defined in it
define serviceescalation {
        name                    critical-services
        first_notification      1
        last_notification       10
        contact_groups          admins-escal
        notification_interval   2
        register                0
}

# test critical services
define serviceescalation {
        use                     critical-services
        host_name               beast
        service_description     PROCS-qemu
}

Is there other information I should provide to better troubleshoot this?

Any help greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Alex

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