Tracking the performance of synthetics, websites and internet services, helps detect, diagnose, and resolve issues.

Improved monitoring

Synthetics performance monitoring uses metrics that provide graphical output for a selected synthetic monitor. Synthetic monitoring also provides the process of tracking the root cause for the unavailability of any synthetic monitor.

Accessibility

Monitor your services using the supported web browsers: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Internet Explorer.

All users in your organization can configure, edit, and delete synthetic monitors.

Whitelisted IP addresses

A network firewall can block synthetic servers from accessing websites. You can whitelist IP addresses of public synthetic servers for the corresponding locations on your websites.

Firewall restriction prevents access to public cloud servers. A Forbidden Access or Access Denied message displays in the alerts when access is attempted.

See Synthetic server whitelist IP addresses for the current synthetics IP addresse list.

FAQs

Can I monitor my internet services from private and public locations using synthetic monitoring?

Yes, you can monitor private locations (internal network) and public locations. The supported public locations are:

  1. Atlanta, U.S
  2. Fremont, U.S
  3. New Jersey, U.S
  4. Canada Central
  5. London, U.K
  6. Frankfurt, Germany
  7. Singapore
  8. Tokyo, Japan
  9. Mumbai, India

What are the different types of monitors supported?

The different types of synthetic monitors available are:

  • DNS
  • FTP
  • HTTP/HTTPS
  • HTTP-SCRIPT Transaction
  • IMAP
  • PING
  • POP3
  • RTT
  • SIP
  • SMTP
  • SSL
  • TCP
  • UDP

For more information, see Creating synthetic monitors.

What are the hardware requirements for synthetic monitoring?

Specification2 vCPU2vCPU4 vCPU8 vCPU16 vCPU
RAM (Minimum Specifications)2GB RAM4GB RAM8GB RAM16GB RAM32GB RAM
Estimated number of HTTP Synthetic Transactions Scripts to execute per hour10035070012002400
Maximum number of synthetic monitor tests executed per hour (except HTTP Synthetic Transaction Scripts)30K30K30K30K30K

If you are using Proxy, contact Support for the proxy configuration.

Do I need to follow any prerequisites before adding a synthetic monitor?

Yes, the following prerequisites are required before adding a synthetic monitor:

  • Whitelist IP addresses for location.
  • Assign synthetics template - This is used to initiate synthetic monitoring using Assign Templates or Device Management Policies.
  • Set permissions for Device Create, Device Edit, Device View, and Device Manage to create, edit, view, and delete the configured synthetic monitors respectively.
  • Verify if your assigned role has access to all resources. Otherwise, you cannot delete a synthetic monitor.

How do I manage accounts for synthetic monitoring?

You can manage your account and organization. Click the following links to:

Can I assign templates to initiate synthetic monitoring?

Yes, synthetic monitoring starts only after assigning the synthetic templates to the monitor. For more information, see Assigning Templates.

What happens if the free RAM in the Synthetic Collector is less than 500MB?

If the available RAM is less than 500MB, the synthetic application will not initiate any requests for that iteration until the available RAM exceeds 500MB to start monitoring. During this time, the collector will not report any monitoring data.

Why there is a difference in certificate validity days between SSL and HTTPS monitoring?

In Synthetics, the number of days for the SSL certificate validity is calculated as part of both HTTPS and SSL synthetic services.

The SSL synthetic resource type is used to monitor the SSL certificate of the configured URL. On the other hand, with the HTTPS synthetic resource type, we monitor the SSL certificate of the end-redirected URL.

It’s important to note that there might be cases where customers observe different validity periods for an HTTPS and SSL synthetic resource, even if they have the same URL configured.
Example; SSL may show 10 days and HTTPS shows 15 days of certificate validity.

How do we check the certificate details?

To check certificate details, use the following curl commands.

For HTTPS synthetic data:

curl -vIL <url> 

For SSL synthetic data:

curl -vI <url>