Ping monitors ensure your website is responding, while simple browser monitors send real browsers to check your website.
For more complex monitoring, scripted browser monitors verify that specific resources are present, while API tests verify your API endpoint.
The default timeout for a new monitor is 180 seconds.
To learn how to use our step monitor to build complex workflow validation scripts without writing any code, watch this short YouTube video (approx. 3:20 minutes).
Specify a monitor type, name, and URL (may be any valid HTTP or HTTPS URL).
Optional: Add a validation string or Advanced options:
A validation string is available for ping and simple browser. This option enables substring monitoring for response validation.
Verify SSL is available for ping and simple browser. This option verifies the validity of the SSL certificate chain. It can be duplicated by running the following syntax:
If a non-zero exit code is returned, the monitor will fail.
The Bypass HEAD request option is available for ping. This option skips the default HEAD request and instead uses the GET verb with a ping check.
Redirect is Failure is available for ping. If a redirect result occurs when Redirect is Failure is enabled, New Relic Synthetics will categorize the result as a failure, rather than following the redirect and checking the resulting URL.
Select the locations from which you want your monitor to run.
Choose a frequency to determine how often each location will run your monitor.
Specify a name and enter the URL you'd like to monitor (may be any valid HTTP or HTTPS URL).
Select the period to determine your monitor's frequency.
Optional: Add tags to help you find this monitor later.
Select the locations from which you want your monitor to run, and then click Save monitor to confirm.
Generate some traffic and wait a few minutes, then check your monitor from the Monitors index.
Tip
You can also add monitors with the Synthetics REST API. For example, you can create a GET request to the monitor you want to use as the source for configuration, then use those key values to use in a POST to "copy" and create a new monitor.
Edit a monitor
You cannot change a monitor's type after the monitor is created, but you can edit other monitor settings.
From the Monitors tab in one.newrelic.com> Synthetics, select the monitor you want to edit.
In the side menu, select a link to change the following settings:
When configuring monitors, the following settings are available:
Select the type of monitor you want to create. A monitor's type can't be changed after the monitor is created.
Ping: Specify a single URL to monitor for availability. New Relic will check this URL via HEAD or GET requests. The non-configurable timeout for this monitor is 60 seconds.
Simple browser: Specify a single URL to monitor via real browser. Once each frequency interval, New Relic will check this URL via a Selenium-powered Google Chrome browser. The non-configurable timeout for this monitor is 60 seconds.
Scripted browser: Create a script to drive a Selenium-powered Google Chrome browser. The browser follows each step in the script to verify that complex behavior is working as expected (for example, searching a website, then clicking one of the search results). The non-configurable timeout for this monitor is 180 seconds.
API test: Create an API script to ensure your API endpoint is working correctly. For more information, see Write API tests. The non-configurable timeout for this monitor is 180 seconds.
Defines a name for the monitor. Monitor names cannot contain unencoded angle brackets (< >). To include angle brackets in a monitor name, encode them as HTML bracket entities (< >) in the UI or API.
Select the locations where you want your monitor to run. Select more locations to ensure that your application is available to users around the world. If you have any private locations, they will be listed here too. You can use the Synthetics API location endpoint to retrieve a list of valid locations for your account.
Your monitor will run one check from each selected location during each frequency interval. For example, if you select three locations and define a frequency of 15 minutes, your monitor will run three checks in each 15 minute period (or 8,640 checks per month).
Select how often the monitor runs, in increments of minutes, hours, or 1 day. This frequency applies to each location. For example, if you select three locations and a Frequency of 15 minutes, your monitor will run three checks, on average every 5 minutes, in each 15 minute period (or 8,640 checks per month).
Specify an email address to receive alerts when a monitor fails. Or, attach a monitor to an existing alert policy for more notification options. For more information, see Alerting for synthetic monitoring.
Customize the Apdex T for this monitor. This setting is only available when editing the settings for an existing monitor, not when creating a new monitor. Change the Apdex T from the default 7 seconds for more accurate Apdex scores in your SLA reports. For example, if you have a very long scripted browser, you might adjust the Apdex T to 15 seconds to more closely reflect the usual completion time. Similarly, a good Apdex T for a simple browser check might be only 2 seconds.
Specify text to search for on the page. When using simple browser or ping monitor types, there is a 1MB (10^6 bytes) limit on the page load.