I've got a database to design that will be tracking system information
such as hostid, vendor, serial number, etc., most of which I can keep
in one table because it is data unique to each system (not vendor,
obviously.) Call this table "main." In addition there are about 30
system "checks" I have to add which will be pass/fail values, with a
text note to accompany if the check is flagged as a failure.

Question is, should I include all 30 checks as cols in the "main"
table, or create a separate table to track them? In addition, if any
check on a specific host fails, I have to log the failure. Should I
have a table for each type of check that would log the main.id and the
failure message, or should I have only one table that logs the
main.id, the check type, and the failure message? It seems to me that
the multiple tables method has less redundant data.