Digital experience monitoring (DEM)
Digital experience monitoring (DEM) tracks the performance and availability of external websites and URI endpoints using synthetic monitoring methods, or monitoring real user activity and experiences with a website.
To monitor a website or URI endpoint with synthetic methods, SolarWinds Observability uses probes to periodically connect to the website and perform tests. The tests verify the website's availability and report it's uptime, whether the SSL/TLS certificate will expire, and response times from the uptime tests. Ping tests send echo requests to your URI and wait for responses using the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP). TCP/IP tests send a string request to your URI and verify the returned response using the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). See Synthetic monitoring for details about the synthetic availability tests.
The probes that test the websites are located on servers in various places around the world. See Probe servers and associated IP addresses.
To perform real user monitoring (RUM), a script is placed into the HTML of your website. When a visitor accesses your website, the JavaScript sends data collected from the browser to SolarWinds Observability. This data may include details about the user, such as where they are located or what browser they use, and details about their experiences interacting with the website, such as page load times. See Real user monitoring for more details about collecting RUM data.
Use this data to observe variations in the availability and use of your website at different locations over time. You can configure alerts to notify you of problems with a website's availability or user experience.
Monitor an external website or URI in SolarWinds Observability
To monitor an external website, see Add a website. To monitor a URI, see Add a URI.
Use the DEM area overview to view metric data gathered from all monitored websites.
Use the Entity Explorer to view a list of your observed websites and URI entities. The synthetic availability results are available in the entity details tabs. These widgets include test results details and availability metrics, such as the percentage of tests that succeed, the average response time, and response time history. The real user monitoring metrics for websites are shown in the RUM widgets of the entity details tabs. These results include the number of pageviews, the top pages visited, a map of visitors to your website, and the actual load time of the webpages.
Website and URI metrics are also available in the Metrics Explorer.
The probe servers for SolarWinds Observability need to be able to access your configured websites and URI entities. If the targeted website or URI endpoint blocks the probe's access with a firewall or an access control list, the test result might incorrectly indicate a failure. To observe websites or URIs hosted on a local network, your server or site must allow access to SolarWinds Observability probe server IP addresses. See Probe servers and associated IP addresses.
Website widgets
In addition to standard visualizations of metric data, the following widgets display detailed insights into your websites or URIs and their test results.
Details
On the Overview tab, the Details widget shows basic site details including the site name and URL, as well as tested protocols, probe platforms, and other availability monitoring details. If available, real user monitoring details, such as Apdex satisfied load time and Apdex tolerating load time, and more, are also available in the Details widget.
Test Results
The Test Results widget displays the table of all availability tests performed by SolarWinds Observability during the selected time period. Select a test in the table to view the test result, a root cause analysis, and, if applicable, related traces. See Availability test results.