Documentation forSolarWinds Observability SaaS

Synthetic monitoring

To monitor a website's availability with synthetic methods, SolarWinds Observability SaaS uses probes to periodically connect to the website and perform tests. The tests report each website's uptime, whether the SSL/TLS certificate will expire, and response times from the uptime tests.

The probes that test the websites are located on servers in various places around the world. See Probe servers and associated IP addresses.

When you configure SolarWinds Observability SaaS to monitor a website, you specify:

  • Which locations you want the tests to run from
  • Whether to test using HTTP and/or HTTPS protocol(s)
  • Whether to check when the SSL/TLS certificate will expire
  • If you want to send a custom header with the tests
  • If the webpage should contain specific test when loaded
  • How often the tests should run

For complete instructions detailing how to add or modify a website entity for monitoring, see Add a website.

The options selected when configuring your website determine how many of your subscription's uptime checks will be used for the website. The number of uptime checks is calculated by multiplying the number of Protocols you select times the number of Test from locations you select. The number of uptime checks determine how many tests are configured to run per interval. See Subscription for more information about Digital Experience: Synthetics subscriptions.

Probes from the selected locations connect to your website at the specified interval and test the performance and availability of the website. Based on the test results, SolarWinds Observability SaaS displays the following information about each website:

  • A health score provides real-time insight into the overall health and performance of your monitored entities. The health score is calculated based on anomalies detected for the entity, alerts triggered for the entity's metrics, and the status of the entity. The health score is displayed as a single numerical value that ranges from a Good (70-100) to Moderate (40-69) to Bad (0-39) distinction.
  • The average response time for a web browser to receive a response from the targeted website.
  • Errors encountered while testing the website.

Use the Test Results widget to see the details of each availability test performed, including the test result, a root cause analysis, and any related traces. See Availability test results.