Do You Know What is Synthetic Monitoring? and How Does Synthetic Monitoring Work? Types of Synthetic Monitoring

What is Synthetic Monitoring?

Organizations depend on fully functioning IT systems and processes to attract customers, deliver services and manage internal operations. The operation of these systems and processes directly impacts the business and reputation of each organization. Ensuring that all IT systems and processes are fully functional 24×7 is a key component of any organization’s IT performance management strategy. This is where synthetic monitoring comes in.

Synthetic or directed monitoring is a method to monitor your applications by simulating users – directing the path taken through the application. This directed monitoring provides information as to the uptime and performance of your critical business transactions, and most common paths in the application. The simple reality is that there is no easy way to combine the accessibility, coherence, and manageability offered by a centralized system with the sharing, growth, cost, and autonomy advantages of a distributed system. It is here, at this intersection, that businesses turn to IT development and operations teams for guidance—APM tools enable them to negotiate these gaps.

How Does Synthetic Monitoring Work?

Synthetic monitoring works by issuing automated, simulated transactions from a robot client to your application in order to mimic what a typical user might do. Synthetic monitoring can be applied inside the firewall - within the data center to ensure that all the machines are running properly, or outside the firewall to provide information about availability and performance from a global perspective. These server calls and testing scripts become “monitoring” tools by running at set, regular intervals—say, every 15 minutes—and can be issued from a single designated synthetic monitoring client browser or from multiple browsers at different server locations to better gauge site availability and responsiveness, globally.

Browser simulation is straightforward and takes up little resources, but it does not provide an accurate picture of the user experience. Simulated browsers cannot follow dynamic, rich websites and therefore may not provide accurate user experience data. While synthetic tests provide a baseline and monitor your applications regardless of the time of day or the traffic on the website, they do not cover everything that is happening on the site. The tests can be running fine but your end users could be having issues. This is due to the tests not simulating the network, geographical location, band with browser or device properly or users doing things on the site you aren’t testing for. In general, synthetic tests are indicative of user experience but not definitive.

Types of Synthetic Monitoring

Although the list of monitor types is large, most monitors fall into one of three categories: availability, performance, and Transaction Monitoring. The more advanced monitors such as Web Application monitors and Full Page Checks cover two or more of the categories.

Availability Monitoring

Availability Monitoring (also called uptime monitoring) is the most basic form of monitoring and at its core means that the site or service is accessible, but some definitions expand that definition to include checking that the website or service functions properly as well (Advanced Availability Monitoring). In its most simple form, an availability monitor sends a Get or a ping and verifies the response for a successful code. More Advance Availability monitors may check for specific content, response time, attempt to authenticate a user, perform an API call, or verify a DNS or SSL certificate entry.

Web Performance Monitoring

Web Performance Monitoring takes Availability Monitoring to the next level and may check the page load speed, show performance on an element-by-element basis, and report on frontend and backend response times. Frequently Web Performance Monitoring uses a native browser to load the returned content for Real Browser Monitoring and Full Page Checks. Loading the returned content into an actual browser window can capture errors that don’t appear initially in the first response. Issues captured by Web Performance Monitoring include checking for content, errors and slow responses caused by third-party content, and slow responding CDNs and databases. Web Performance Monitoring also includes multi-browser monitoring and mobile monitoring.

Transaction Monitoring

Transaction Monitoring or Web Application Monitoring takes Synthetic Monitoring to yet a higher level. The checkpoint computer runs a script that can login to a service, complete forms, purchase products, and respond to system prompts. Transaction Monitoring tests the “happy paths” to ensure that visitors can complete their tasks.