PRTG Manual: Inheritance of Settings

The hierarchically structured device tree organizes the devices in your network. This object hierarchy is the basis for the inheritance of settings. Objects in the device tree can inherit their settings from a higher level. For example, you can change the scanning interval of all sensors by editing the interval setting of the root group (if you define no other setting underneath in the object hierarchy).

Inheritance to Child Objects

You can override the inheritance of settings to child objects at any level of the object hierarchy if you set a different value for a specific probe, group, device, or sensor. All objects underneath inherit these new settings. Object settings from higher levels do not inherit the new settings.

Settings that are inherited to all objects include:

• Scanning intervals
• Notification triggers
• Credentials for different systems
• Compatibility settings for specific sensor types
• Channel and unit configurations
• Access rights
• Tags
• Paused status: If an object is paused by the user or by a schedule, PRTG sets all sensors on this object to the Paused status as well

There is one exception for devices and sensors. Sensors always inherit the IP Address/DNS Name of a device and the compatibility settings. You cannot change these settings at sensor level.

Here you can see the Credentials for Windows Systems setting that the object inherits from the parent:

Inherited Credentials for Windows Systems

Click next to inherit from [parent object] to override the parent object's settings and enter new settings for this object and all objects underneath in the object hierarchy.

Credentials for Windows Systems

Click Save for your settings to take effect. If you click after you enter your settings, the object inherits the parent object's settings again and your object-specific settings do not take effect.

Default Settings in Root Group

For all settings except passwords, PRTG already includes a set of default values. The following settings, for example, are inherited by all sensors from the root group:

• A default scanning interval of one minute
• SNMP v1 with the community string set to public (this is the default setting for most devices)
• The dependency type Use parent (default)
• And more

Before you set up your monitoring, we recommend that you review the root group settings and set the default values to suit your setup. This includes the credentials for the different systems in your network that you want to monitor (Windows, Linux, virtual servers, different vendors, and more).

For more information, see section Root Group Settings.

Inheritance of Notification Triggers

If you add notification triggers at probe, group, or device level, these are also inherited to all sensors underneath in the object hierarchy unless you manually disable the inheritance.

For more information, see section Notification Triggers Settings.