This brief guide will address how you can properly track your web host’s uptime by using our platform.
Once you get a new hosting environment, may it be shared hosting, a VPS, or a dedicated server, you’ll want to start monitoring its uptime in order to be notified of any downtimes that may be critical to your business or infrastructure.
Start by adding a simple uptime monitor to in your HetrixTools dashboard:
- If you’re hosting a website, then add a Website Uptime Monitor:
https://docs.hetrixtools.com/add-a-website-uptime-monitor/
This type of uptime monitor is the most preferred, as it monitors everything from A to Z in regards to your server and website, all in one monitor. Here are a few examples:
– if the server where your website is hosted goes down, then your website will also go down, and your uptime monitor will notify you of the downtime
– if there’s an issue with your website loading too slowly and timing out, your uptime monitor will notify you of the downtime
– if there’s a network issue, the website will load very slowly or not at all, and again, the uptime monitor will notify you of this downtime
– if your domain has any DNS issues, then your website will stop resolving properly, and you’ll be notified of the downtime
– etc. - If you’re not hosting a website but you are hosting another type of application that runs on an open port, you can add a Service Uptime Monitor:
https://docs.hetrixtools.com/add-a-service-uptime-monitor/
By specifying a port to be monitored, our system will make sure that it gets healthy responses from that specific port, so you’ll know that the app or service you are running on that port is up.
And, just as with the Website Uptime Monitor, you’ll also be notified of any other issues with your hosting server, such as when it has network issues or when it goes down completely. - If you wish to monitor your SMTP server directly, you should add an SMTP Uptime Monitor:
https://docs.hetrixtools.com/add-a-smtp-monitor/
This type of monitor will ensure that your SMTP server is healthy and responds properly to incoming connections. This, on top of detecting any other issues with your hosting environment, such as network issues or it being down completely. - If none of the three cases above applies to you, then you can add a Ping Uptime Monitor: https://docs.hetrixtools.com/add-a-service-uptime-monitor/
This will simply ping the desired IP address or hostname, and you’ll be notified if it becomes unresponsive. This type of uptime monitor will still notify you of most of the issues with your hosting environment, such as when the server has network issues or goes down completely or (in the case of a monitored hostname) when it does not resolve properly (DNS issues). - The last option, that’s the least reliable of them all, would be to use a Heartbeat Uptime Monitor:
https://docs.hetrixtools.com/add-a-server-agent-monitor/
By design, this type of uptime monitor is the least reliable of them all, considering it does not use our global uptime monitoring network to determine your uptime, and having just one point of failure is more prone to false positives, as explained here: https://docs.hetrixtools.com/why-isnt-a-heartbeat-monitor-as-reliable-as-other-types-of-uptime-monitors/
We advise adding this type of uptime monitor only in such cases where your hosting environment cannot be pinged/reached from the outside (i.e., only has outgoing connections allowed in its firewall or is behind NAT).
Furthermore, you can always attach our Server Monitoring Agent to any of your uptime monitors in order to track even more server metrics such as CPU, RAM, Network, Disk, etc., and be notified if any of them go above your configured thresholds: https://docs.hetrixtools.com/attach-a-server-monitor-to-any-of-your-uptime-monitors/
Once you’ve configured your uptime monitor, you can rest assured that you’ll be notified if your hosting environment ever goes down or has any issues.
You can even make your uptime report public and share its link with your colleagues or hosting provider, as explained here: https://docs.hetrixtools.com/privatepublic-uptime-reports/
And, going a step further, you can bulk up multiple uptime monitors into a beautiful status page for your users: https://docs.hetrixtools.com/how-to-create-a-beautiful-uptime-status-page/
If you ever need assistance in deciding on which type of uptime monitor is best suited for your needs, our support is ready to answer all of your questions; just open a support ticket on our website.