• /
  • Log in
  • Free account

Types of synthetic monitors

You can proactively monitor your website or API endpoints with synthetic monitors. Depending on the type of monitor, you can:

You can also use the host not reporting feature in infrastructure monitoring. This allows you to take advantage of enhanced monitoring options and be notified when New Relic has stopped receiving data from your hosts.

Types of monitors

These are the seven types of synthetic monitors:

Type of synthetic monitor

Description

Broken links monitor

API name: SCRIPT_API

Provide a url and this monitor will test all the links on the page for success. If a failure is detected you can view the individual non-successful links that caused the failure.

Certificate check monitor

API name: SCRIPT_API

Proactively ping your domain certificates based on a configurable threshold. Pair with an alert to ensure you are notified when your certificates need renewed.

Ping monitor

API name: SIMPLE

Ping monitors are the simplest type of monitor. They simply check to see if an application is online. The synthetic ping monitor uses a simple Java HTTP client to make requests to your site.

For consistency with other synthetic monitor types, the user agent is identified as Google Chrome. However, the HTTP client is not a full browser, and it does not execute JavaScript. If you need JavaScript functionality, use a simple browser monitor.

Step monitor

API name: STEP_MONITOR

Step monitors are advanced monitors which require no code to set up.

The monitor can be configured to:

  • Assert modal
  • Assert text
  • Assert title
  • Assert an element
  • Click an element
  • Dismiss a modal
  • Double click an element
  • Enter a secure credential
  • Hover over an element
  • Locate an element by CSS class, HTML ID, link text, Xpath, or value
  • Navigate to a URL
  • Select from a dropdown
  • Type text

Simple browser monitors

API name: BROWSER

Simple browser monitors essentially are simple, pre-built scripted browser monitors. They make a request to your site using an instance of Google Chrome.

Compared to a simple ping monitor, this is a more accurate emulation of an actual customer visit. The user agent is identified as Google Chrome.

Scripted browser monitors

API name: SCRIPT_BROWSER

Scripted browser monitors are used for more sophisticated, customized monitoring. You can create a custom script that navigates your website, takes specific actions, and ensures specific resources are present.

The monitor uses Google Chrome browser. You can also use a variety of third-party modules to build your custom monitor.

API tests

API name: SCRIPT_API

API tests are used to monitor your API endpoints. This can ensure that your app server works in addition to your website. New Relic uses the http-request module internally to make HTTP calls to your endpoint and validate the results.

You can add and edit synthetic monitors directly in our UI. You can also create some synthetic monitors with Terraform. To learn how, watch this short YouTube video (approx. 3:25 minutes).

Create issueEdit page
Copyright © 2022 New Relic Inc.