Browser monitors in private locations

Private browser monitors are the perfect solution for testing your enterprise applications from inside your private network infrastructure.

Private browser monitors are available with DESK version 1.170+ and ActiveGate version 1.169+. To start executing browser monitors from private locations, you must reinstall the ActiveGate. It's not sufficient to modify the settings in the custom.properties file.

What are browser monitors?

It's either single-URL browser monitor testing the availability of a single page of your website or web application, or browser clickpath simulating the sequence of interactions.

What is a private synthetic location?

A location in your private network infrastructure where you install a synthetic-enabled ActiveGate. With browser monitors executed on this ActiveGate, you can check the availability of internal resources that are inaccessible from outside your network.

Before you begin

The private browser monitors are executed on a clean installed synthetic-enabled Environment ActiveGate version 1.169+ or Cluster ActiveGate with DESK Managed version 1.176+. If you want to use an existing ActiveGate machine, uninstall it first.
The synthetic-enabled ActiveGate is used exclusively to run synthetic monitors. The clean ActiveGate installation set to Synthetic monitoring disables all other ActiveGate features, including communication with OneAgents.
You need to make sure the ActiveGate can connect to other DESK components, as well as the resource you want to test. See Setting up proxy for private synthetic.
Private monitors can be executed on an ActiveGate installed on Ubuntu Server 16.04, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, CentOS 7, or Windows Server 2016 since version 1.173. See System and hardware requirements for private synthetic.
Make sure your hardware is strong enough to run private monitors. A synthetic-enabled ActiveGate is more demanding in terms of hardware requirements. See System and hardware requirements for private synthetic.

Limitations

You can create maximum of 100 private locations for a tenant and maximum of 200 locations can be assigned to an individual synthetic browser monitor.
In DESK Managed offline deployments, you won't be able to save screenshots.

Setting up browser monitors in private locations

Step 1. Install dependencies (Linux only)

On Linux, you have to manually manage the dependencies and proper versions of ActiveGate and Chromium required by the browser monitors engine. On Windows, Chromium is bundled with the ActiveGate installed in the synthetic mode.

ActiveGate	Chromium
1.169+	73

Ubuntu Server 16.04

Install private browser monitors engine dependencies:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y install xvfb x11-xkb-utils xfonts-100dpi xfonts-75dpi xfonts-scalable

Install Chromium dependencies:

sudo apt-get -y install libasound2 libatk-bridge2.0-0 libatk1.0-0 libc6:amd64 libcairo2 libcups2 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 libgtk-3-0 libnspr4 libnss3 libxss1 xdg-utils

Download and install Chromium.

ActiveGate 1.169+

Download deb packages and save them to a convenient place. These are safe and verified packages hosted by DESK.

curl https://s3.amazonaws.com/synthetic-packages/Chromium/deb/chromium-browser_73-ubuntu.16.04.1_amd64.deb --output chromium-browser_73-ubuntu.16.04.1_amd64.deb  
curl https://s3.amazonaws.com/synthetic-packages/Chromium/deb/chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra_73-ubuntu.16.04.1_amd64.deb --output chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra_73-ubuntu.16.04.1_amd64.deb

Install downloaded packages. Go to the directory where you saved the packages and run the following command:

sudo dpkg -i chromium-browser_73-ubuntu.16.04.1_amd64.deb chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra_73-ubuntu.16.04.1_amd64.deb

Disable automatic update of Chromium packages:

echo "chromium-browser hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections  
echo "chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections

Optional Install non-latin TrueType fonts:

sudo apt-get install xfonts-cyrillic fonts-arphic-uming ttf-wqy-zenhei fonts-wqy-microhei ttf-wqy-microhei ttf-wqy-zenhei xfonts-wqy fonts-hosny-amiri

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and CentOS7

Set up repositories

Red Hat CentOS

sudo subscription-manager register --auto-attach

Enable the Red Hat Extras and Optional repositories, as well as EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux ).

sudo subscription-manager repos --enable rhel-7-server-extras-rpms  
sudo subscription-manager repos --enable rhel-7-server-optional-rpms  
sudo rpm -Uvh https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm

Enable EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux ).
```
sudo yum install epel-release  
```

Install private browser monitors engine dependencies

sudo yum install -y xorg-x11-server-Xvfb xorg-x11-xkb-utils xorg-x11-server-utils xorg-x11-fonts-100dpi xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi xorg-x11-fonts-Type1 curl

Download and install Chromium

ActiveGate 1.169+

Download rpm packages and save them to a convenient place. These are safe and verified packages hosted by DESK.

curl https://s3.amazonaws.com/synthetic-packages/Chromium/rpm/chromium-73.el7.x86_64.rpm --output chromium-73.el7.x86_64.rpm  
curl https://s3.amazonaws.com/synthetic-packages/Chromium/rpm/chromium-common-73.el7.x86_64.rpm --output chromium-common-73.el7.x86_64.rpm  
curl https://s3.amazonaws.com/synthetic-packages/Chromium/rpm/chromium-libs-73.el7.x86_64.rpm --output chromium-libs-73.el7.x86_64.rpm  
curl https://s3.amazonaws.com/synthetic-packages/Chromium/rpm/chromium-libs-media-73.el7.x86_64.rpm --output chromium-libs-media-73.el7.x86_64.rpm

Install downloaded packages. Go to the directory where you saved the packages and run the following command:

sudo yum install -y chromium-73.el7.x86_64.rpm chromium-common-73.el7.x86_64.rpm chromium-libs-73.el7.x86_64.rpm chromium-libs-media-73.el7.x86_64.rpm

Disable automatic update of Chromium packages:

sudo yum -y install yum-plugin-versionlock  
sudo yum versionlock chromium  
sudo yum versionlock chromium-common  
sudo yum versionlock chromium-libs  
sudo yum versionlock chromium-libs-media

Optional Install non-latin TrueType fonts:

sudo yum install xfonts-cyrillic fonts-arphic-uming ttf-wqy-zenhei fonts-wqy-microhei ttf-wqy-microhei ttf-wqy-zenhei xfonts-wqy fonts-hosny-amiri

Step 2. Install a synthetic-enabled ActiveGate.

Install a clean synthetic-enabled ActiveGate and add it to a private synthetic location. For more information, see Installing synthetic-enabled ActiveGate. You must perform a clean ActiveGate installation in the Synthetic monitoring mode to use it for private browser monitors.

Step 3. Create a browser monitor

Create a single-URL browser monitor or a clickpath and assign it to a private location you've just created.

Questions and answers

Can I use a proxy with the synthetic-enabled ActiveGate?

With ActiveGate version 1.175+, an ActiveGate executing private browser monitors can connect through the proxy to both, the DESK Cluster and tested resource. For more information, see Setting up proxy for private synthetic.

Can I update an earlier ActiveGate to version 1.169+ and configure it to use with private browser monitors?

No, you need to run a clean installation in the Synthetic monitoring mode to enable your ActiveGate to execute browser monitors from private locations.

Can I turn on Synthetic on an existing ActiveGate installation?

Synthetic requires a clean installation of ActiveGate in the Synthetic monitoring mode. Such an installation will be exclusively Synthetic as described in Installing synthetic-enabled ActiveGate.

Manual editing of the custom.properties file is not sufficient to enable ActiveGate to execute synthetic monitors.

Can I add browser monitoring to a Synthetic-enabled ActiveGate already running HTTP monitors?

To add browser monitoring on Synthetic-enabled ActiveGates already running HTTP monitors, you need to reinstall ActiveGate in the Synthetic monitoring mode.

Manual editing of the custom.properties file is not sufficient to enable browser monitoring in this case.

Troubleshooting

ActiveGate installation failed due to missing dependencies

In such cases

Uninstall ActiveGate.
See Uninstall ActiveGate for details.
Satisfy the dependencies.
Run the installation again.

I can't see the browser monitors' screenshots

We store the screenshots in Amazon S3. If you can't see your reference or error screenshots, it means that either your ActiveGate or the browser from which you access DESK can't access the Amazon S3 service. Change your firewall configuration to allow connections to *.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com on port 443. You can also set up your proxy to connect to the Amazon S3 service. Since version 1.175, you can proxy communication to S3 for screenshots. Add proxy connection details to the [synthetic] section of the ActiveGate custom.properites file. For more information, see Set up a proxy for private synthetic monitoring.