Follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Configuration | Maintenance and click on Create maintenance period. In the resulting form, fill in these values:

• • Name: Enter Maintenance with all data dropped
  • Maintenance type: Choose No data collection
  • Active since: Make sure this is set to the start of your current day or earlier
  • Active till: Make sure this is set to a year or so in the future
  •  Description: Enter We don't need no data

2. Switch to the Periods tab and click on New.
3. In the Date field, set the date and time to the current values as shown in the following screenshot:

4. Click on the small Add link—again, that first one, not the Add button.
5. Now, switch to the Hosts and groups tab. Make sure the host selection says Another host. 
6. Now, click on the Add button. There should be two maintenance entries in the list:

7. Go to Monitoring | Latest data and make sure Linux servers is selected in the Host groups field in the filter.

Notice how data stopped coming in for the items in Another host—the timestamp is not being updated anymore. That's because of the maintenance without data collection that we created. As such, triggers will not fire, and problems for such hosts will not appear in the frontend, no matter what the filter settings are.

Let's take a quick look at Configuration | Hosts. This is another location where the maintenance status can be seen. Hosts that are in maintenance will have In maintenance listed in the Status column—this replaces the normal Enabled text:

We discovered the way maintenance can affect data collection and the displaying of problems. Another important reason to use it is skipping or modifying notifications. We will discuss notifications in Chapter 7, Acting upon Monitored Conditions.