Monitored website using NPM/SAM not alerting when down

Question

So, am still getting my feet wet with SAM and configuring monitors.  I created a node for an external website, and setup an alert owner for that.  The node does not appear to have gone down during the last downtime, but I also created an HTTP monitor for it in SAM, and that didn't go down when the website was down either.

Am unclear on what I'm doing incorrectly, as I have setup the node to be the external site name.  Then the Web Link Monitor is setup to poll the website for valid links, and it never fails, even if we take the web server offline.  I also setup an HTTP monitor for the page, which also never fails.

Am looking for a simple, no complications, way to monitor a website whether it is up or not.  I don't control the services on it, don't want to get fancy, just want to know if it is down, and I'm sorry, but the documentation I've been able to find is either 404 not available or too complex.  I don't want to buy WPM to do this, and see all over where people say this is simple... but is it?

Links or help is appreciated...

cnorcross · Answer

I suppose it depends on what the site looks like when it's down.  I've run into cases where a site wasn't working but still returning HTTP 200 response codes.  I think Solarwinds will always assume the page is up at that point.

You could try adding a text match if there is a word on the page you can expect to be there when the site is working vs not present when it's down.  This works pretty well with links that perform some sort of search.  The component will still register it as a HTTP 200 but the text match fails which triggers a status change in the component.

Monty30381 · Answer

So I will tell you what I can...

In SAM, I went to manage applications and then created a template and then a monitor for the website in question.  Looking at it, it has a web link monitor set to Enabled, no credentials, monitoring a website (name obscured):

http://websitesname.com/name/name/name/name03?client=22

Accept compression, true, Excludes *.png, all defaults past this.

I also setup an HTTP monitor for this with will test against being the external node I setup, enabled, port 80, no credential, with same website details as above, using GET host request, no proxy (though proxy address filled in by default), everything else defaults.

As mentioned, it shows up... so it thinks it gets a response but it never goes down...

Thoughts?

cahunt · Answer

What is the monitoring method for this Node you added?

As well, what is setup for the HTTP Monitor?  HTTP://${IP}:${Port}/

If there is a default website that stays on your monitor might be catching that but without a few more details we can not be sure. Any screen shots or details of the setup would help

The Web Link monitor will crawl the site for bad links, but also should show down if there is no site accessible (at least that has been my experience).

Cheers!