- can be inherited from the monitor’s parent host
- can be selected from a global list of named rules (a named rule can be used for any node)
- can be set specifically for a given monitor (and can’t be used for any other node)
- if a named Alerting rule is changed, this affects all the nodes (monitors, hosts, monitor groups, etc) using this named rule
- if a named Alert is changed, all the Alerting Rules that use this alert are affected immediately