Creating an alert that restarts an app pool when a URL check fails with a 500

I'm having difficulty crafting an alert that will do this:

Check to ensure a specific application pool is UP (our standard app pool sensor already attempts a restart if the app pool is DOWN)
Check if a node-specific URL is coming back with the expected result (text search)
If the Pool is UP, but the URL check fails, restart the application pool

The difficulty I'm having is associating the correct app pool on the correct node with the specific URL check. I have a custom template that checks the node-specific URL (site1.example.com, site2.example.com, site3.example.com) and through the AppInsight sensors, I know if an app pool is up or down. But I can't seem to tie these two together in any way. It's highly likely that I've gone about this entirely the wrong way, so I'm open to suggestions on how to do this efficiently.

Any help is appreciated.

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mprobus

There is a built in alert for the App Pools. Have you looked at this to see if it fits your needs?

larrynfp

The built in App Pool check isn't helpful in this case.

jorich

Sounds like this could be accomplished with a two-part (complex) Alert condition trigger.

Section 1 (Primary Section)

First configure your condition for the App Pool - Alert on AppInsight for IIS: Application Pool

AppInsight for IIS: Application Pool > Name (or whatever) > is equal to <Name of app pool>

-and-

AppInsight for IIS: Application Pool > State > is equal to > Started

Then, check the "Enable complex conditions" box to enable a second condition section, and click the ADD SECTION button

(Leave the "And" option in the joining combo box between the condition sections)

Section 2 (Secondary Section)

Alert on URL (HTTP/S) Component when Down

Component: Component > Instance > is (select instance)

-and-

Component: Component > Status > is equal to > Down

Then configure the Restart IIS Site/Application Pool Action option as the Trigger Action

larrynfp

Yeah - that would work, but I was hoping to avoid having to custom create a single alert for each and every single check. I do appreciate the help.

For further elaboration, we have a series of web farms and each farm has 6-20 applications on it - each with their own node specific URL. I've create application templates for each farm where I've customized the URL check for each of the servers so that it uses the node specific URL for each application on each node (someapp1.example.com, someotherapp1.example.com - both on Node 1, someapp2.example.com, someotherapp2.example.com - both on Node 2, etc.). I created a template for each farm that includes all of the apps on that farm and then customize the URL check per server.

I've successfully created the alerts that let me know exactly which URL is failing and on which node. What I was really hoping I could do would be to add a step to this specific alert that would restart the associated application pool. Since posting this question, I've created a PowerShell script that successfully determines the app pool name from the URL on a given node... but I can't see how to use this information to restart the pool using a SAM alert. I'll just have to include the restart app pool command in the script and execute the application as a trigger action. Unless, of course, you know a way that I'm missing that would successfully use the app pool information result from the script and perform the requisite recycle.