We can define soft and hard states as:
>In case of the SOFT state, the service or host check results are not OK or not up to the mark, even in case if service check has not been rechecked the number of times that are specified for it moreover the times that is being specified by the max_check_attempts directive. Recovery of the component from such Soft error is called Soft Recovery.
- >When a host or service check result is not ‘OK’ and it has been checked for the number of times, specified by the max_check_attempts directive in the host definition, then this error is known as Hard Error. Recovery of any service from this error is known as Hard Recovery.
