Create a site monitoring task - CloudMonitor - Alibaba Cloud Documentation Center

You can create a site monitoring task to monitor sites on the Internet and analyze network quality and performance.

Prerequisites

Alert contacts and alert contact groups are created. For more information, see Create an alert contact or alert contact group.
A callback URL that can be accessed over the Internet is prepared if you need to enable the alert callback feature for alert rules. In addition, URL callback is enabled as an alert notification method in your existing O&M or notification system.

Background information

To test and monitor access to your site, CloudMonitor sends detection requests that simulate real user access from Alibaba Cloud data centers to your site. Site monitoring is suitable for the following scenarios:

Monitoring of DNS resolution failures
You can configure a scheduled task to monitor DNS resolution failures. You can select the detection points of China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom in the provincial capitals of China. CloudMonitor sends detection requests to your domain name and obtains the resolution results of the domain name from the public DNS servers of the specified carriers. If the resolution results obtained by CloudMonitor are different from the DNS records configured for the domain name, the DNS servers of the specified carriers fail to resolve the domain name. DNS resolution failures may be caused by DNS hijacking and DNS poisoning.
Monitoring of service availability
You can configure a scheduled task to monitor an HTTP or HTTPS domain name. You can select detection points distributed around the world to send detection requests. The status code in the detection results indicates the availability of your service. After you configure alert rules, CloudMonitor sends alert notifications if an abnormal status is detected. Then, you can troubleshoot your service based on the information displayed in the console. In addition, you can observe the network latency between your service and the carrier detection points in different regions. The information helps you understand the user experience of carriers in different regions, and provides a reference for you to optimize the deployment architecture of your business system.
Comparative analysis of network quality
You can configure a scheduled task to send ping requests to a specific domain name. You can select carrier detection points in different countries and regions. After the task runs for a period of time, you can observe the network latency between your service and the carriers in different countries and regions. You can also configure multiple tasks to send ping requests to different domain names. By comparing the detection results of different tasks, you can observe the network quality of the domain names.

Procedure

Log on to the CloudMonitor console.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose Network Analysis and Monitoring > Site Monitoring (Scheduled Detections).
On the Site Monitoring Tasks tab, click Create Task.

On the Create Task page, configure the parameters of the site monitoring task.

Basic Information

Task Type: HTTP(S)

Parameter	Description
Task Name	The name of the site monitoring task. The name must be 4 to 100 characters in length, and can contain letters, digits, and underscores (_).
Monitored Address	The address of the site that you want to monitor. Valid values: GET (default) POST HEAD
Frequency	The frequency at which the site monitoring task sends detection requests to the site that you want to monitor. Valid values: 15 Seconds, 1 Minutes, 5 Minutes, 15 Minutes, 30 Minutes, and 60 Minutes. For example, if you select 1 Minutes, a detection point in a region sends a detection request to the site that you want to monitor every minute. Note If you activated pay-as-you-go CloudMonitor Basic (cms_post) or purchased subscription CloudMonitor Basic (cms_edition) before 22:00:00 on September 13, 2022, you cannot set the Frequency parameter to 15 Seconds. You must activate Network Analysis and Monitoring before you can set the Frequency parameter to 15 Seconds.
Advanced Settings	For more information about the advanced settings for HTTP or HTTPS, see Advanced Settings. Important Handshake protocols earlier than TLS 1.2 have security vulnerabilities. Therefore, CloudMonitor does not support handshake protocols earlier than TLS 1.2 on the server, keeping path with mainstream browsers. If the error `tls: server selected unsupported protocol version 302` occurs on a running site monitoring task but you do not want to upgrade the TLS protocol on the server, you can select the minimum compatible TLS version on the Others tab of the Advanced Settings page.

Task Type: PING

Parameter	Description
Task Name	The name of the site monitoring task. The name must be 4 to 100 characters in length, and can contain letters, digits, and underscores (_).
Monitored Address	The address of the site that you want to monitor. Valid values: GET (default) POST HEAD
Frequency	The frequency at which the site monitoring task sends detection requests to the site that you want to monitor. Valid values: 15 Seconds, 1 Minutes, 5 Minutes, 15 Minutes, 30 Minutes, and 60 Minutes. For example, if you select 1 Minutes, a detection point in a region sends a detection request to the site that you want to monitor every minute. Note If you activated pay-as-you-go CloudMonitor Basic (cms_post) or purchased subscription CloudMonitor Basic (cms_edition) before 22:00:00 on September 13, 2022, you cannot set the Frequency parameter to 15 Seconds. You must activate Network Analysis and Monitoring before you can set the Frequency parameter to 15 Seconds.
Number of Ping Packets	The number of times that the site is pinged. Default value: 10.

Task Type: DNS

Parameter	Description
Task Name	The name of the site monitoring task. The name must be 4 to 100 characters in length, and can contain letters, digits, and underscores (_).
Monitored Address	The address of the site that you want to monitor. Valid values: GET (default) POST HEAD
Frequency	The frequency at which the site monitoring task sends detection requests to the site that you want to monitor. Valid values: 15 Seconds, 1 Minutes, 5 Minutes, 15 Minutes, 30 Minutes, and 60 Minutes. For example, if you select 1 Minutes, a detection point in a region sends a detection request to the site that you want to monitor every minute. Note If you activated pay-as-you-go CloudMonitor Basic (cms_post) or purchased subscription CloudMonitor Basic (cms_edition) before 22:00:00 on September 13, 2022, you cannot set the Frequency parameter to 15 Seconds. You must activate Network Analysis and Monitoring before you can set the Frequency parameter to 15 Seconds.
Type	The type of DNS records that you want to query. Valid values: A (default) MX NS CNAME TXT ANY AAAA
DNS Access Protocol	The transport layer protocol used by DNS. Valid values: udp (default) tcp tcp-tls
DNS Server	The type of the DNS server. Valid values: System default DNS The operator DNS corresponding to the detection point Custom DNS
Number of Retries after DNS Failure	The number of retries after a DNS detection fails.
Expected Resolution Result	CloudMonitor checks whether the DNS resolution result contains the expected domain names or IP addresses. If the list of expected values is a subset of the list of DNS results, the detection is considered successful. Separate multiple domain names or IP addresses with commas (,).
Matching Rule	The matching rule for the domain name or IP address.

Task Type: TCP or UDP

Parameter	Description
Task Name	The name of the site monitoring task. The name must be 4 to 100 characters in length, and can contain letters, digits, and underscores (_).
Monitored Address	The address of the site that you want to monitor. Valid values: GET (default) POST HEAD
Frequency	The frequency at which the site monitoring task sends detection requests to the site that you want to monitor. Valid values: 15 Seconds, 1 Minutes, 5 Minutes, 15 Minutes, 30 Minutes, and 60 Minutes. For example, if you select 1 Minutes, a detection point in a region sends a detection request to the site that you want to monitor every minute. Note If you activated pay-as-you-go CloudMonitor Basic (cms_post) or purchased subscription CloudMonitor Basic (cms_edition) before 22:00:00 on September 13, 2022, you cannot set the Frequency parameter to 15 Seconds. You must activate Network Analysis and Monitoring before you can set the Frequency parameter to 15 Seconds.
Port	The TCP or UDP port number. Default value: 80.
Advanced Settings	For more information about the advanced settings for TCP or UDP, see Advanced Settings.

Task Type: SMTP or POP3

Parameter	Description
Task Name	The name of the site monitoring task. The name must be 4 to 100 characters in length, and can contain letters, digits, and underscores (_).
Monitored Address	The address of the site that you want to monitor. Valid values: GET (default) POST HEAD
Frequency	The frequency at which the site monitoring task sends detection requests to the site that you want to monitor. Valid values: 15 Seconds, 1 Minutes, 5 Minutes, 15 Minutes, 30 Minutes, and 60 Minutes. For example, if you select 1 Minutes, a detection point in a region sends a detection request to the site that you want to monitor every minute. Note If you activated pay-as-you-go CloudMonitor Basic (cms_post) or purchased subscription CloudMonitor Basic (cms_edition) before 22:00:00 on September 13, 2022, you cannot set the Frequency parameter to 15 Seconds. You must activate Network Analysis and Monitoring before you can set the Frequency parameter to 15 Seconds.
Port	The SMTP or POP3 port number. Default SMTP port number: 25. Default POP3 port number: 110.
Username	The username and password of the SMTP or POP3 server.
Password	The username and password of the SMTP or POP3 server.
Secure Connection	Specifies whether to use secure connections for SMTP or POP3. Valid values: Use Do Not Use

Task Type: FTP

Parameter	Description
Task Name	The name of the site monitoring task. The name must be 4 to 100 characters in length, and can contain letters, digits, and underscores (_).
Monitored Address	The address of the site that you want to monitor. Valid values: GET (default) POST HEAD
Frequency	The frequency at which the site monitoring task sends detection requests to the site that you want to monitor. Valid values: 15 Seconds, 1 Minutes, 5 Minutes, 15 Minutes, 30 Minutes, and 60 Minutes. For example, if you select 1 Minutes, a detection point in a region sends a detection request to the site that you want to monitor every minute. Note If you activated pay-as-you-go CloudMonitor Basic (cms_post) or purchased subscription CloudMonitor Basic (cms_edition) before 22:00:00 on September 13, 2022, you cannot set the Frequency parameter to 15 Seconds. You must activate Network Analysis and Monitoring before you can set the Frequency parameter to 15 Seconds.
Port	The FTP port number. Default value: 21.
Anonymous Logon	Anonymous Logon (default) Authentication Required If you select the Authentication Required option, you must specify the username and password of the FTP server.
Username	The username and password of the FTP server.
Password	The username and password of the FTP server.

Define Assertions
If you set the Task Type parameter to HTTP(S), you can use the assertion feature to specify conditions based on the response that is returned by a detection and check whether the expected result is returned. You can configure multiple assertions by specifying conditions. A detection point is available only if it meets all the specified conditions.
Note
If you do not configure a status code assertion for HTTP detections, status codes that are less than 400 are available by default.
CloudMonitor provides an available condition by default. If the default condition does not meet your business requirements, perform the following steps to add conditions:
1. Click Add Condition Group.
2. Configure the condition of the assertion.
  - Response Time (ms): checks whether the response time meets expectations. Default setting: less than 1,000 ms.
  - Status Code: checks whether the response status code meets expectations. Default status code: less than 400.
  - Header: checks whether the fields in the response header meet expectations. You must configure a custom condition for the response header assertion.
  - Body, XML Field of Body, and JSON Field of Body: check whether the content in the response body meets expectations by using text matching, XML parsing (XPath), and JSON parsing (JSONPath). For more information, see XPath Syntax and JSON with JSONPath.
3. Click Verify.
  You can view the verification result on the right side of the page.
  - If the verification result is Successful, you can create a site monitoring task as expected.
  - If the verification result is Failed, you can perform network diagnostics at the corresponding detection point.
If responses that do not meet the conditions are detected, you can initiate PING and MTR detections at the corresponding detection points.
Note
MTR is a network diagnostic tool that integrates PING and Traceroute features.

Select Detection Points

Parameter	Description
IP Protocol	The type of the IP address that is used by the site monitoring task. Valid values: IPv4 and IPv6.
Select Custom Detection Points	The default detection points and custom detection points that are used for site monitoring. If the default detection points do meet your business requirements, perform the following steps to add custom detection points: Click the icon next to Select Custom Detection Points. In the Detection Point Templates panel, click Create Template. In the Create/Modify Detection Point Template dialog box, enter a custom template name in the Template Name field and select custom detection points that you want to use. Click OK. In the Detection Point Templates panel, click OK.

Configure Alert Rules

CloudMonitor provides an alert rule by default. If the default rule does not meet your business requirements, perform the following steps to add an alert rule:

Click Add Rule Description.

In the Add Rule Description panel, configure parameters for the alert rule. The following table describes the parameters.

Parameter	Description
Rule Name	The name of the alert rule.
Metric Name	The name of the metric that is used by the alert rule. Valid values: Percentage of Available Detection Points Percentage of available detection points = (Number of times that a domain name or IP address can be accessed properly within a monitoring period/Total number of detection requests) × 100%. Number of Unavailable Detection Points This metric specifies the number of times that the domain name or IP address of the site cannot be accessed as expected within a monitoring period. Number of Available Detection Points This metric specifies the number of times that the domain name or IP address of the site can be accessed as expected within a monitoring period. Any Status Code (Independent Alert) If the status code that is returned by one of the detection points meets the specified condition, an alert is triggered. All Status Codes (Combined Alert) If the status codes that are returned by all detection points meet the specified condition, an alert is triggered. Response Time
Comparison	The operator that is used to compare the metric value with the threshold in the alert rule. Valid values: >= > <= < = != Compared With Yesterday Rise Compared With Yesterday Decline Compared With Last Week Rise Compared With Last Week Decline Compared With Last Period Rise Compared With Last Period Decline
Threshold and Alert Level	The alert level and the corresponding threshold. The notification method for alerts of the Info level is Email + Webhook. Valid values of the number of consecutive periods in which the metric value reaches the threshold before an alert is triggered: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 15, and 20.
Tag	The tags of the alert rule.

Click OK.

Select Alert Contact Groups

Parameter	Description
Contact Groups	Select the alert contact groups to which alert notifications are sent. Select at least one alert contact group. Alert notifications are sent to the alert contacts that belong to the specified alert contact groups. An alert contact group can contain one or more alert contacts.
Mute For	The interval at which CloudMonitor resends alert notifications before the alert is cleared. Valid values: 5 Minutes, 15 Minutes, 30 Minutes, 60 Minutes, 3 Hours, 6 Hours, 12 Hours, and 24 Hours. If a metric value reaches the threshold, CloudMonitor sends an alert notification. If the metric value reaches the threshold again within the mute period, CloudMonitor does not resend an alert notification. If the alert is not cleared after the mute period ends, CloudMonitor resends an alert notification. Note You can click Advanced Settings to configure this parameter.
Effective Period	The period during which the alert rule is effective. CloudMonitor monitors the specified resources based on the alert rule only within the specified period. Note You can click Advanced Settings to configure this parameter.
Alert Callback	The URL that is used to receive the alert notifications sent from CloudMonitor by using HTTP POST requests. The URL must be accessible over the Internet. You can enter only an HTTP URL. For information about how to configure alert callbacks, see Use the alert callback feature to send notifications about threshold-triggered alerts. To test the connectivity of an alert callback URL, perform the following steps: Click Test next to the the callback URL. In the WebHook test panel, you can check and troubleshoot the connectivity of the alert callback URL based on the returned status code and test result details. Note To obtain the details of the test result, configure the Template Type and Language parameters and click Test. Click Close. Note You can click Advanced Settings to configure this parameter.

Click Create.

What to do next

If the site monitoring task shows assertion failed, the assertion fails. You can perform the following steps to view the cause of the failure:

On the Monitoring Tasks tab of the Site Monitoring Tasks page, click the name of the site monitoring task that you want to manage.
On the Overview page, click the Error tab.
Find the detection point that you want to troubleshoot, and click Troubleshoot in the Actions column. Then, view the cause of the assertion failure.

Advanced settings

The following tables describe the advanced settings for different protocols.

HTTP or HTTPS

Tab	Parameter	Description
Request Parameters	HTTP Request Header	An HTTP header is a key-value pair in which the key and value are separated by a colon (`:`). Each HTTP header occupies a line. Site monitoring adds the following preset headers to the request: `Host:${Domain name in the monitored address}` `Pragma:no-cache` `Cache-Control:no-cache` `User-Agent:Chrome/57` `Accept: /` If the request body is a form, the request also contains the following header: `Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=UTF-8` If your request contains one or more of the preceding headers, the headers are overwritten by your settings. Note Site monitoring converts the keys that you specify in the request headers to the canonical format of MIME headers based on the following rules of the HTTP protocol: The first letter and the letter that follows a hyphen (-) are converted to uppercase letters. For example, accept-encoding is converted to Accept-Encoding. If a key contains a space or invalid characters, the key remains unchanged.
	Cookie	The HTTP cookie.
	Request Content	The request content can contain multiple key-value pairs in the `key1=value1;key2=value2` format or a JSON string in the `{"test":"testValue"}` format. Note This parameter is required if you set the Request Method parameter to POST.
	Unfollow Redirect	Specifies whether to follow redirects if the status code 301 or 302 is returned. By default, the check box is cleared. This indicates that redirects are followed.
	Certificate Verification	Specifies whether server name indication (SNI) is supported. By default, the check box is cleared. This indicates that SNI is not supported.
User Authentication	HTTP Authentication Username	The username and password that are used for basic HTTP authentication.
User Authentication	HTTP Authentication Password
DNS Server	DNS Server	The IP address of the DNS server.
Others	Enable PROXY Protocol	Specifies whether to enable the PROXY protocol. By default, the check box is cleared. This indicates that the PROXY protocol is not supported.
	Minimum TLS version	The minimum TLS version with which CloudMonitor is compatible. Valid values: `tlsv1.0` `tlsv1.1` `tlsv1.2` `tlsv1.3`
	Matching Response Mode	If you specify the response content that you want to match, site monitoring checks whether the first 64 KB of the response body contains the response content that you specify. Valid values: Generate Alerts If Response Contains Generate Alerts If Response Does Not Contain Site monitoring determines whether to generate an alert based on the mode in which the response is matched. The matching content must be in English.
	Match Response Content
	Acceptable Additional HTTP Status Codes	An HTTP status code that is greater than or equal to 400. Separate multiple status codes with commas (,).

TCP or UDP

Parameter	Description
Request Format	This parameter takes effect only if you configure the Request Content parameter. Valid values: Text Hexadecimal Format
Request Content	Text Common text refers to strings that consist of printable characters. Note Common text does not support escaping. For example, \n is considered as two characters (\ and n) rather than the newline character. Hexadecimal Format If the request content is a byte string that cannot be presented in printable characters, you can convert the byte string to a hexadecimal string that consists of printable characters. Conversion rules: A byte is converted to two hexadecimal characters. For example, `(byte)1` is converted to 01, and `(byte)27` is converted to 1B. Binary array in the Java format: `{(byte)1, (byte)27}` is converted to 011b or 011B. Hexadecimal characters are not case-sensitive in site monitoring. Enter `"011B"` in the Request Content field and set the Request Format parameter to Hexadecimal Format.
Matching Content Format	This parameter takes effect only if you configure the Content Match parameter. Valid values: Text Hexadecimal Format
Content Match	Text Common text refers to strings that consist of printable characters. Note Common text does not support escaping. For example, \n is considered as two characters (\ and n) rather than the newline character. Hexadecimal Format If the request content is a byte string that cannot be presented in printable characters, you can convert the byte string to a hexadecimal string that consists of printable characters. Conversion rules: A byte is converted to two hexadecimal characters. For example, `(byte)1` is converted to 01, and `(byte)27` is converted to 1B. Binary array in the Java format: `{(byte)1, (byte)27}` is converted to 011b or 011B. Hexadecimal characters are not case-sensitive in site monitoring. Enter `"011B"` in the Request Content field and set the Request Format parameter to Hexadecimal Format.