Monitoring Tasks Overview

An HTTP/S task checks a single URL for availability, performance, proper content, errors, and broken links. It supports POST and GET requests, cookies, form submissions, custom headers, password secured sites (basic HTTP/HTTPS authorization as well as cookie/script authorization mechanisms), and timeout thresholds. The HTTP task supports monitoring of both IPv4 and IPv6 protocols.

HTTP/S tasks can validate security certificates, check certificate authority, check for expiration and send you reminders when the certificate expiration date is approaching.

See also Add / Edit an HTTP(S) Task.

The Telnet port availability task allows you to send a request to a specific port on a server to make sure that you receive a response.

See also Add / Edit a Telnet Port Availability Task.

The ping command sends an ICMP echo request to a target name or IP address, helping you to verify IP-level connectivity. This is useful for ensuring the integrity of routers, firewalls, and multiple Internet appliance devices, and is an important component of your remote network monitoring services.

See also Add / Edit a Ping / ICMP Task.

SOAP is a lightweight protocol for the exchange of information in a decentralized, distributed environment. It is an XML-based protocol that consists of three parts: an envelope that defines a framework for describing what is in a message and how to process it, a set of encoding rules for expressing instances of application-defined data types, and a convention for representing remote procedure calls and responses.

A SOAP task assigns agents to replicate one or more client requests and monitor the Web Services for availability, errors, and proper content. The agent will send alerts If an issue is detected based upon the preferences selected in the device setup.

See also Add / Edit a SOAP Task.

The task checks video and audio streaming services for performance, errors, and availability.

See also Streaming Media Monitoring and Add / Edit a Streaming Media Task.

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), is the Internet protocol for electronic mail delivery that most mail servers today use to deliver e-mail. Whenever you send an e-mail, your e-mail client interacts with the SMTP server. The SMTP server on your host may communicate with other SMTP servers to actually deliver the e-mail.

During an SMTP monitoring task, the agents monitor the SMTP server by connecting to the specified mail server and performing an SMTP handshake. If a remote server does not respond to a handshake or is unavailable, an error condition will be triggered and if you have set up alerting, you will receive an alert.

See also Add / Edit an SMTP task.

The POP3 / IMAP monitoring task checks a remote mail server to verify that users can access their email account via POP3, or IMAP protocols.

The Monitor connects to a mail server (POP3 or IMAP) and logs in using a user name and password you provide. For example, when you check your e-mail your e-mail client connects to a POP3 server using port 110. The POP3 server requires an account name and a password. Once you have logged into the POP3 server it opens your email store and allows you to access it. Dotcom-Monitor® uses the same protocol to monitor your POP3 servers for errors and sends an alert when a monitoring agent detects an issue.

See also POP3 / IMAP task.

An ActiveSync Email task uses Exchange Active Sync (EAS) to monitor your Microsoft Exchange servers for errors and sends an alert when a monitoring agent detects an issue.

The task checks a remote mail server to verify that users can access their email account via Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol, then sends an email and checks for the successful delivery of the email message after which the email is deleted.

Any error detected during monitoring check is reflected in the report with an Error Code and appropriate description.

A monitoring check follows these steps with no issues for a successful response:

1. Connect to a specified mailbox
2. Send a test email from the specified mailbox to the same address
3. Check for the test email within the mailbox.

See also Add / Edit an ActiveSync Task.

The SMTP-POP3/IMAP task provides complete end-to-end monitoring of your Mail servers. First, a monitoring agent tests the SMTP server by sending an e-mail to the specified e-mail address. After that e-mail is sent the agent attempts to log in and retrieve the e-mail from a POP3/IMAP server. If the SMTP or POP3/IMAP steps experience an error or the email is not found within a specified time-out period an error is recorded. If you have alerts configured, you will receive an alert.

See also Add / Edit a Round Trip Email task (SMTP-POP3).

DNS server monitoring queries a specified DNS server in order to resolve a specific internet protocol (IP) address. DNS server monitoring occurs at a regular frequency (1-minute, 3, 5, etc.).

See also Add / Edit a DNS task.

A DNSBL task polls major domain name service (DNS) Blacklist (DNSBL) databases for an IP or a hostname you specify. If the IP or hostname is found in one of the DNSBL databases an error will be flagged and if you have alerts configured, an alert will be triggered.

The technology is built on top of the Internet Domain Name System. DNSBLs publish lists of addresses linked to spamming. Most mail transport agent (mail server) software can be configured to reject or flag messages which have been sent from a site listed on one or more of these DNSBLs.

If your mail servers are included in a DNSBL database it will cause other companies to deny email delivery from your servers. It is important to know if your servers are listed in DNSBLs, so you can quickly request removal and find the root cause of the DNSBL listing.

The DNSBL task references the following authoritative blacklists:

• psbl.surriel.com
• dnsbl.sorbs.net
• bl.spamcop.net
• zen.spamhaus.org
• b.barracudacentral.org
• all.spamrats.com

If your mail server or IP address are detected on any of these blacklists, you may need to contact the specified blacklist directly in order to determine why your address is listed and remove the address from the list.

See also Add / Edit a DNSBL Blacklist Task.

The FTP Monitoring agent connects to the specified FTP server. logs on to the FTP server using a user name and password you provide and a directory-listing command is issued to retrieve a specific directory. After the contents of that directory are listed the monitoring service checks if specified files exist on the server in that specific directory. If our remote monitoring agents detect a problem in at any point in the process Dotcom-Monitor® will notify you via the notification process.

See also Add / Edit an FTP / SFTP / FTPS task.

The Telnet port availability task allows you to send a request to a specific port on a server to make sure that you receive a response.

See also Add / Edit a TraceRoute task.

VoIP/SIP monitoring tasks create monitoring agents that connect to a specified VoIP server using the supplied credentials to ensure that the service is available.  To accomplish this, SIP Monitoring is provisioned as either an extension or a client on the VoIP system and configured to call a specific number using a specified SIP server with certain parameters. The expected result of the call is set up as “Answer”, “No Answer”, “Busy”, or an error condition (if there is an unexpected result).

If an error is detected, SIP Monitoring records all properties of the error, which helps to pinpoint where the error condition is occurring. SIP Monitoring reports these error properties as Blobs of text accessible in online reports:

• SIP Final Response:408
• SIP Final Response Description: Request Timeout
• Media: False
• TimedOut: True

See also Add / Edit a VoIP SIP Task.

A UDP monitoring task monitors for UDP availability over the specified port.

See also Add / Edit a UDP Task.

The custom script allows you to run additional tasks not defined within the basic ServerView platform.  If you have a need that is not handled by the existing tasks, please contact customer service and they will be happy to help you determine how best to meet your need.  Sometimes our customer service team will create a custom script file that will perform additional tasks for you.  In this case, they would upload the file to your account using the custom script task page.

See also ServerView Custom Script Task.

The MetricsView Windows service enables Windows computer or server monitoring and allows users to monitor a test, or production environment using data from Windows Performance Counter (WPC) and set alerts when those thresholds are exceeded.

Check also the articles from the Windows Performance Monitoring category of the wiki.

The MetricsView Linux monitoring service enables Linux computer or server monitoring and allows users to set thresholds for data from Collectd performance counters and set alerts when those thresholds are exceeded.

Check also the articles from the Linux Performance Monitoring category of the wiki.

The task enables monitoring of SNMP capable devices using SNMP V1, V2 or V3.  For V1 and V2.

Check also the articles from the SNMP Monitoring category of the wiki.

The task allows users to monitor the performance of any custom metrics available for collecting on a server or device.

Check also the articles from the Custom Collectors category of the wiki.