Monitors
Monitors are the centre of your monitoring experience. Muktipe monitors can be configured per host and eacg monitor can have multiple notitications linked to it.
Like hosts and notifications, each monitor must be linked to a team.
Creating a Monitor
Note
Each new monitor will be created in a paused state. This is to ensure that you have configured all the additional attributes like schedule frequency, monitor type, and notifications. By default each new monitor is created as a ping test which you can then change and configure for the specific monitor type required.
Your monitors can be created either when viewing a host or from the Monitors page. Both starting points will show you the same steps to create your monitor.
Monitor Location
The Monitor Location attribute is important as it defines the data centre location around the world where this check will run from. You should try to choose a location that is close to where you service being monitored runs from. e.g. use a monitor location in New Zealand for your systems that run in NZ.
You may also wish to run monitors from distant locations to help confirm the experience your customers or staff will have.
Editing a Monitor
After your monitor has been created you will be able to edit it aand choose the monitor type. The view for editing a monitor has multiple tabs for configuration options and the current status of the monitor and related incidents.
General
The main attributes of the monitoring function for what will actually be checked.
Frequency
How often do you want the monitor check to run? For availability checks you might want this to be a higher freqency that something like a certificate expiry check.
You need to have a paid subscription option to have a scheduled frequency less than every 5 minutes.
Monitor Target
Different types of monitors require different inputs for what they’re going to check. A monitor to verify the HTTP response code will need a properly formed URL, but a ping check will need just the DNS name or an IP address.
Important
Your target system MUST be accessible from the monitor location that you have selected. Any firewalls or network requirements to allow the monitor to reach your system need to be accommodated. We strongly suggest a least privilege approach.
Monitor Type
See monitor types for more information.
Monitor Specific Options
Different types of monitors require different inputs to carry out the check. After you have selected the monitor type, you must update the options for the monitor so it has the correct information.
Here’s an example of the DNS monitor type and the information required.
The Expected Result option is an inportant option that allows you to check for expected negative statuses. Choosing the “Failure - the monitor does not match the options” can be very useful to ensure that a specific state is identified quickly and alerted on. This could be for scenarios like ensuring that your website does not return HTTP 200 codes for plain HTTP port 80, if it’s expected to always redirect to HTTPS port 443.
Notification Config
When the monitor carries out a check and it results in a failure state it can trigger a notification to be sent.
You need to create a notification for use by one of your teams, before they can be used in a monitor. Any notification linked to any team that you are a member of will be available to be used.
The trigger can be set to be states of Success or Failure or Success and Failure. In most cases support personnel would want to be notified of a failure and then the recovery.
Failure and Success thresholds are defined to only create and send notifications after multiple sequential events.
Each notification will only send a single time for a change in the status, unless you set the Repeated Notifications option to send on every failure. Use this with caution as repeted notifications may not be what your support teams want to see.
Notifications
The Notifications tab simply shows a list of all notifications that have been triggered by the monitor in the last 30 days.
Incidents
The Incidents tab lists the previous incidents that were created due to monitor failure/down events.
Metrics
The performance and status changes of your monitor are displayed in an easily consumed view. The time taken for the monitor to get a response for the check is shown in the line chart and the results are in the timeline blocks. Red, oranage and green indicate time periods of complete failure, partial failure or complete success. Remember these are based on the Expected Result value for your monitor.
Host
A view of the host that the monitor is linked to. Click on the link icons next to the name and the team value to view those resources.