Exploring synthetic monitoring
Summarize
Summary of Exploring synthetic monitoring
Synthetic monitoring in ServiceNow provides proactive, automated testing of service endpoints by simulating user interactions. It continually tests HTTP endpoints stored in the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) to check availability, response times, and response content. When test criteria fail, such as incorrect status codes or slow response times, alerts can be generated to notify your team before real users are impacted.
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Tests can be executed from various locations including the ServiceNow platform (for publicly accessible endpoints), an Agent Client Collector (ACC) within your network, or a MID Server.
User Roles and Responsibilities
- Synthetic monitoring administrator (admin role): Assigns roles, creates and edits monitors, and reviews test results.
- Service owner (Editor role): Creates and edits monitors and views test results.
- Network operation center (NOC) operator (Viewer role): Monitors tests and reviews results.
Workflow
- Service owners select critical endpoints to monitor based on business importance.
- Admins or service owners configure monitoring locations—ServiceNow hosted location is available by default, with options to use ACC Proxy clusters or MID Servers.
- Monitors are configured and run; results are reviewed for success or failure.
- Alerts can be set to notify the team when tests fail, enabling prompt troubleshooting and resolution.
- Operators and service owners continuously monitor test results and respond to alerts.
Benefits and Features
- Aggregate monitoring visibility: View overall status and detailed information about all monitors on the synthetic monitoring homepage.
- Detailed test insights: Access charts displaying success rates, response times, test logs, response bodies, and associated alerts for each monitor.
- Proactive outage notifications: Configure real-time alerts to detect outages before they affect users.
- Stakeholder communication: Share summarized monitoring data with relevant teams and stakeholders.
- Flexible monitor management: Edit, update, or deactivate monitors to align with evolving business needs.
- Integration with Service Observability: Embed synthetic monitoring results within Service Observability dashboards for consolidated visibility.
Learn how synthetic monitoring provides proactive, automated testing of service endpoints. By simulating user interactions, it can identify bugs, performance issues, and outages before they impact real users.
Synthetic monitoring overview
Synthetic monitors continually call HTTP endpoints in the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) to test availability, response times, or the presence of a defined string in the response body. When a test fails the configured criteria, it can alert you to endpoint issues before your users do.
For example, you might create a monitor that tests the GET HTTP endpoint of a service. You could configure that monitor to check for a status code of 200 and a response time of under 500
ms. If any code other than 200 is returned or the request takes longer than 500 ms, the test fails. An alert can then be generated and sent through Event Management.
Synthetic monitoring users
| User | Description |
|---|---|
| Synthetic monitoring administrator (admin role) | Assigns roles, creates and edits monitors, and views monitor tests and their results. |
| Service owner (Editor role) | Creates and edits monitors and can also view monitor tests and their results. |
| Network operation center (NOC) operator (Viewer role) | Monitors tests and their results. |
Synthetic monitoring customer-hosted workflow
Admins, service owners, and NOC operators use synthetic monitoring in the following way:
- As a service owner, you determine which endpoints to monitor based on business criticality.
- As an admin or service owner, you configure locations to run the monitor from.Note:The ServiceNow hosted location is available by default and does not have to be configured. However, endpoints tested by that location must be publicly available. You can also run the monitor from an ACC Proxy cluster or a MID Server.
- As an admin or service owner, you configure the monitor and then after it runs once, review the results of the tests. If the results aren't successful, you troubleshoot the configuration. You can also create an alert that fires when a test fails.
- Synthetic monitoring runs tests based on the monitor's configuration and reports the results of each test.
- As a service owner or operator, you monitor the test results and also respond to any generated alerts.
Synthetic monitoring benefits
| Benefit | Feature | Users |
|---|---|---|
| View aggregate monitor information. View the synthetic monitoring home page where you can:
|
View aggregate information about the monitors. | Operators, service owners |
| Visualize synthetic test results. View the details page for a monitor where you can see:
|
View a monitor and its tests. | Operators, service owners |
| Get real-time notifications for outages before they impact users. | Optionally configure alerts when tests don't succeed. | Operators, service owners |
| Share insights with stakeholders. | View aggregate monitor information. | Operators, service owners |
| Update monitors to match your business needs. | Edit existing monitors, including deactivation. | Service owner |
| Embed monitor results in a Service Observability dashboard. | Use synthetic monitoring with Service Observability | Service owner |