Synthetic Monitoring FAQs

Synthetic Monitor Frequently Asked Questions

What are the IPs for the monitor source regions?

You can find the IP addresses on the Synthetic Monitor reference page

Why is it important to monitor from outside of the path of where my application is hosted?

Monitoring from infrastructure that is separate from where your application is hosted gives an unbiased perspective of your application health and performance, resulting in a more realistic picture of application availability and end-to-end performance for end-users.

How long after creating a monitor will data be available?

Currently newly created monitors take ~2-3 min before data is available.

What are Health Policies and how do they work?

Health Policies are user-defined thresholds used to determine monitor health. Dynamic Thresholds are used to detect time-series anomalies using statistical algorithms, turning monitor health critical when the defined standard deviation values are exceeded for the specified evaluation period. Static Thresholds are fixed response times, turning monitor health critical when the defined thresholds are exceeded for the specified evaluation period.

Why does my Dynamic Threshold Health Policy need a week's worth of data to begin detecting anomalies?

To avoid false positives and reduce alert noisiness, Dynamic Threshold Health Policies require a week's worth of monitor data in order to establish what normal behavior is for the monitored endpoint. Monitors with Dynamic Threshold Health Policies enabled will look at the previous 7 day period on a rolling basis to calculate the new threshold daily.

How do I tune my Dynamic Threshold Health Policy to be less sensitive/alert less often?

To reduce sensitivity of your Dynamic Threshold Health Policy and alert less often, you can increase the standard deviation value and/or increase the evaluation period for the health policy. Increasing the standard deviation value will increase the dynamically calculated threshold that needs to be exceeded before the monitor goes critical. Increasing the evaluation period will increase the amount of time that the monitor latency needs to be in violation state before the monitor turns critical. To increase sensitivity and alert more often, you can reduce the standard deviation value and/or decrease the evaluation period.

What region does the TLS monitor report run from?

The TLS monitor report will always source from US-EAST-1 within the reference page. This will be the case regardless of what regions the performance and health monitors you have running are set to.

How often are TLS reports generated?

The TLS report for a given HTTPs monitor is generated one time every 24 hours.

How is TLS Score generated?

The overall TLS score comes from the SSL Lab's Server Rating Guide. You can view a detailed explanation of the specification here.

How do I calculate the number of Monitor Executions I will need?

Monitor Executions represents the number of individual times a monitor has been run across all configured regions. The 3 factors that determine the monthly consumption for a monitor are:

  • Number of Regions for the monitor
  • Interval of the Monitor in minutes

Formula: (1440 (Minutes in a day) / <interval>) * (<Number of regions>) = Executions per day

Monitor Executions per interval per day:

Monitor IntervalExecutions per day per region
30 seconds2880
1 minute1440
5 minute288
15 minute96
30 minute48
1 hour24
6 hour4
12 hour2
1 day1

Examples for a single monitor using a 1 min interval:

  • 1440 (executions per day) x 1 Region x ~30 days in a month = 43,200
  • 1440 (executions per day) x 3 Regions x ~30 days in a month = 129,600

Examples for a single monitor using a 5min interval:

  • 288 (executions per day) x 1 Region x ~30 days in a month = 8,640
  • 288 (executions per day) x 3 Regions x ~30 days in a month = 25,920
How many executions are included per month as part of the base Organization plan?

The base Organization plan includes 500,000 Synthetic Monitoring executions per month. For usage over the included 500,000 executions per month, please reach out to your account team for more information.