Create an HTTP monitor

Synthetic monitoring gives you the option of creating HTTP monitors to check the availability of your resources—websites or API endpoints. Because HTTP monitors can be executed by an Environment ActiveGate, you can use them to check the availability of internal resources that are inaccessible from outside your network.

Prerequisites

HTTP monitors can be run from private synthetic locations or, starting with ActiveGate version 1.175, on DESK Managed from cluster-wide locations. See Installing synthetic-enabled ActiveGate for details on using ActiveGate for Synthetic Monitoring.

Starting with ActiveGate version 1.165, synthetic HTTP monitoring is available on all supported Linux distributions and Windows Server 2016. See Supported technologies and versions.

Create an HTTP monitor

Select Synthetic from the navigation menu, select Create a synthetic monitor, and then select Create an HTTP monitor.
Name this HTTP monitor
Enter a name (up to 500 characters) for the synthetic monitor. You can add more than one request to a single synthetic monitor. This name should generally describe all the requests that you will monitor with this synthetic monitor.
UI configuration (default) means you will view and edit the monitor settings through the UI controls.
You can later switch to the Script view of your request if you want to view and edit your HTTP monitor (including all associated request settings) as a script.
Select Add HTTP request and specify the request.
Specify the request type, describe the request, and add it.
- HTTP request - Enter the request URL, enter the request a name (if the default is insufficient) and select an HTTP method.
- OAuth2 authorization request - Enter the access token URL and give the request a name (if the default is insufficient).

When you have entered the basic information above, click Add HTTP request or Add OAuth2 authorization request to create the request and display a summary of the settings.

Verify the basic request settings and edit them as needed.

Check the Additional options settings (which may vary based on the request type) and adjust them as needed.

Additional options

Option	Description
Enable pre-execution script	If you enable this, an edit box is displayed for you to enter a script that will be executed just before the request is triggered. For more information, see Pre- and post-execution scripts for HTTP monitors.
Enable post-execution script	If you enable this, an edit box is displayed for you to enter a script that will be executed just after the request is triggered. For more information, see Pre- and post-execution scripts for HTTP monitors.
Authentication	To automate the login process for password-protected sites, set Authentication to `Basic authentication` and enter your Username and Password.
Add client certificate	Use this option to enable client-side certificate authentication. If you select this, you'll need to browse for and select a certificate file.
Set additional HTTP headers	The monitor is created with a bare minimum set of headers required by the protocol. To enable custom headers: Select Set additional HTTP headers. Click Add header. Enter a Header name and Header value. Click Add another header as needed. You can specify multiple HTTP headers. They will be set for all requests the monitor makes.
Request body	You can send a payload with your POST, PUT, DELETE, and PATCH requests. Specify the request body format and contents: x-www-form-urlencoded - Enter one or more pairs of property keys and values. raw - Enter the request body in the edit box.
Set rules for response validation	Response validation helps you verify that your application loads the expected content by checking if the response contains certain text. Pass if or Fail if determines the basic test. Text contains specifies the text to look for in the response. Texts are case-sensitive. Interpret content match as regular expression treats the specified text as a regular expression. If the pass criteria aren't met (or the fail criteria are met), the monitor will faile and the execution will be aborted.
Follow redirects	By default, an HTTP monitor follows up to 10 redirects from an original request until it reaches the final destination. Turn this option off to monitor only the first response of the redirect chain.
Accept any SSL certificate	By default, HTTP monitors accept any SSL certificate, regardless of whether they're valid. Turn this option off to have the monitor fail with invalid SSL certificates.

To add another request to this HTTP monitor, click Add HTTP request again and repeat the steps above for describing the additional request.
After you have specified one or more requests for this HTTP monitor, click Select frequency and locations to specify the frequency and locations.
Frequency and locations details
Two factors make up your monitoring schedule:
- Monitor my website every n minutes determines how frequently your HTTP monitor runs from each location: every 1, 2, 5, 10, 15, 30, or 60 minutes.
- Location selections specify the locations from which the monitor is executed.
Together, these factors determine how often your HTTP monitor runs each hour. For example, if you select three locations and set Monitor my website every n minutes to 15, the result will be 12 monitor executions each hour (4 times per hour from each of 3 locations).
Select Go to Summary for a final review of the HTTP monitor settings.
On the Summary page, review the properties of your new monitor and select Create HTTP monitor to save your changes and activate the monitor.

The new monitor page is displayed and starts showing statistics as they are acquired.

Click the browse (...) button and select Edit if you want to make any immediate changes. For details, see Configure HTTP monitors.

View the analytics of an HTTP monitor

Select Synthetic from the navigation menu.
Optionally, click HTTP to filter the list of HTTP monitors.
From the list of HTTP monitors, click the monitor you want to examine.

The details page of each monitor displays monitoring analytics:

Availability
Response time
Response size
HTTP status codes

Enable, disable, or delete an HTTP monitor

Monitors are enabled by default when you create them.

To disable or delete a single monitor:

Select Synthetic from the navigation menu.
Optionally, click HTTP to filter the list for HTTP monitors.
From the list of HTTP monitors, click the monitor you want to disable or delete.
On the monitor details page, click the browse (...) button and select the action you need: Disable or Delete.

To enable a single monitor (if you've previously disabled it):

Select Synthetic from the navigation menu.
Optionally, click HTTP to filter the list for HTTP monitors.
From the list of HTTP monitors, select the monitor you want to enable.
On the monitor details page, select Enable.

Duplicate an HTTP monitor

Select Synthetic from the navigation menu.
Optionally, click HTTP to filter the list for HTTP monitors.
Select the checkbox for the monitor you want to duplicate.
Click Duplicate at the bottom the page.
The duplicate monitor page is displayed with a number appended to the original name. Click the browse (...) button and select Edit to edit the default name and make other configuration changes.

Bulk HTTP monitor management

Select Synthetic from the navigation menu.
Optionally, click HTTP to filter the list for HTTP monitors.
Select the checkbox for each monitor you want to manage.
Applicable command buttons are displayed at the bottom of the list.
Click the button you want to apply to all selected monitors. If a button is unavailable, that command doesn't apply to all selected monitors.
- Delete
- Disable
- Enable
- Edit