Documentation forIpMonitor
Effective December 31, 2024, IpMonitor will reach its end of life and will no longer be available or supported. If you liked IpMonitor, consider trying another SolarWinds product.

HTTP monitor

The HTTP monitor verifies that a web server can accept incoming sessions and conduct a transaction.

Use this monitor to ensure that the web server can:

  • Communicate with ipMonitor via the HTTP protocol
  • Respond within a required number of seconds

If you use log analysis or web analytics software, the HTTP monitor may generate hits. See your log analysis software for details about excluding ipMonitor from the analysis.

See the HTTP User Experience and HTML/ASP monitors if you need to request a specific page on a website or analyze the test results.

If the monitor cannot connect to the IP address or domain name, see Troubleshoot connection issues with ipMonitor HTTP-based monitors for details.

Create an HTTP monitor

  1. Click Devices in the toolbar.
  2. Locate and click the targeted device you want to monitor.

  3. In the toolbar, click Add > Add New Monitor.

  4. In the Select Monitor menu, click HTTP.

  5. Under Identification, enter information about the monitor.

    1. Enter a name in the Monitor Name field using up to 64 characters. This name will appear in the monitor list, monitor status, log files, and your reports.

      You can change this name later, if necessary. ipMonitor does not use this field to internally identify this monitor.

    2. Select Enabled to enable the monitor.

      When enabled, the monitor tests the specified resource using the settings you enter under Test Parameters. You can disable the monitor later if required.

    3. Select Store Monitor Statistics for Recent Activity and Historical Reports to enable this functionality.

  6. Under Test Parameters, enter the monitor testing parameters.

    1. Enter the IP address or domain name of the resource you want to monitor.
    2. Enter the TCP port number that the targeted resource responds on. The default is TCP port 80.

    3. Enter the relative path to the resource you want to monitor beginning with a forward slash (/).

      For example:

      /notes/changelog.txt

    4. (Optional) Select Use HEAD request to save bandwidth to verify that the website links are valid and accessible. The monitor obtains meta information about the resource identified by the request URI without transferring the body content.

    5. (Optional) Select Force communication through an HTTP Proxy Server to monitor the HTTP resource through your HTTP proxy server.

      Before you select this option, ensure that the ipMonitor global Client HTTP Settings selection in System Settings are set up correctly to allow communications with your proxy server.

    6. (Optional) Enter the name of the host.

  7. Under Timing, configure the fields for the monitor testing states.

    1. In the Maximum Test Duration field, enter the maximum test duration rate (in seconds) that the monitor times out before the test is considered a failure.

    2. In the remaining fields, enter the number of second between each test while the monitor is in an OK state (Up), a failed state while alerts are processed (Down), and a failed state and the maximum number of alerts have been processed (Lost).

      In the Lost state, no additional failure alerts are processed. However, a recovery notification is sent if the monitor recovers.

  8. Enter the amount of time delay for each monitor testing state. For example, you may choose to intensify testing when a monitor enters a Warn state and reduce testing when the monitor enters a Lost state.

  9. Under Notification Control, complete the fields to determine how many test failures must occur before an alert is sent.

    1. Enter the number of test failures that occur for each alert before ipMonitor generates an alert for the monitor. The default option is 3.

    2. Enter the maximum number of alerts to send before the monitor enters a Lost state.

      The monitor must be assigned to a notification alert to generate an action.

  10. Under Recovery Parameters, complete the fields to indicate the corrective action used to automatically restore a resource using the External Process Recovery, Reboot Server Recovery, or Restart Service Recovery action.

    1. Enter the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN), NetBIOS, or IP Address of the machine hosting the service that needs a restart or the machine that needs a restart. You can also click Browse to locate and select the machine.
    2. Select the set of credentials used by the recovery alert. You can select a specific credential to execute recovery alerts that require access to restricted resources, such as Reboot Server, Restart Service, or External Process.
    3. Select the list of services to restart on the target machine specified in the FQDN/NetBIOS/IP Address field. This field is only required for the Restart Service alert. If a service has dependencies, select all dependent services.
  11. Click OK.

Test results

The test results display HTTP status codes. Codes between 200 and 399 indicate success. Codes between 400 and 599 indicate an error.