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Set up a Site Availability Monitor (SAM) connector

Setting up the SAM connector allows you to monitor the uptime of your cloud-based web applications and notify business and application owners and administrators of problems before they impact your organization.

As part of setting up the connector, you upload a configuration file that includes one or more sites to monitor. After you add your SAM connector, Zenoss uses the Site Availability Monitor template to create your dashboard.

Note

Events are automatically created. You can view them in the Events console.

Perform the following steps to set up your Site Availability Monitor (SAM) connector. For more information, see Site Availability Monitor (SAM).

Important

As a best practice before setting up your connector, check that your service allows the source IP address from which to expect connections. See Before setting up your connectors for the list of IP addresses and more information.

  1. Log in to Zenoss Cloud as a user with the Manager role, and then open the ADMIN > Connectors page.

  2. On the Site Availability Monitor card in the Monitors section, click ADD.

  3. In Site Availability Monitor details, add information about your application.

    1. In the Name field, enter a unique name for your connector. The name you choose is used as the source name for the data that Zenoss Cloud collects.

    2. (Optional) In the Description field, enter text to associate with your connector.

    3. Keep the Connector type as Site Availability Monitor.

    4. (Optional) In the Tags field, enter one or more terms to associate with your connector.

  4. In Configuration, choose a configuration file to upload.

    1. Click the Sample Config button to download a sample configuration file. SAM configuration files are written in YAML. Alternatively, view the sample configuration by hovering your mouse over the info icon.

    2. Customize the sample configuration file or create a new file based on the syntax of the sample. To learn more about the configuration options in the file, see Using the sample configuration file.

    3. Click the upload icon or the filename field and choose your configuration file.

  5. Click SAVE. A confirmation dialog box appears, asking you if you want to create a new dashboard.

  6. (Optional) In the confirmation dialog box, choose CREATE DASHBOARD to create a new dashboard using the SAM template for your connector.

    1. In the NAME DASHBOARD dialog box, enter a unique name for your dashboard.

    2. When you see the success message, click DASHBOARDS to view your dashboard for the SAM connector. Zenoss creates the dashboard using the Site Availability Monitor template, so your dashboard might look similar to the following image:

    For more information about the default SAM dashboard template, see Site Availability Monitor template.

Using the sample configuration file

Zenoss includes a sample YAML configuration file that you can use as the basis for your own connector. The content is similar to the following file content:

urls:
  example-01:
    interval: 30s
    address: https://example01.com
    send_metrics: true
    subpages:
      anything-blue:
        path: anything/blue/
        method: get
      anything-yellow:
        path: anything/yellow/
        method: get

  example-02:
    interval: 2m
    address: https://example02.org
    send_metrics: false
    subpages:
      anything-red:
        path: anything/red/
        method: get

You can use a single configuration file to monitor multiple URLs (example-01 and example-02). Use the following tables of URL configuration options and values to set up your web applications with SAM:

Option Values Description
interval integer followed by s, m, or h The cycle time in seconds, minutes, or hours used to poll the URL and any defined subpages.
address http:// or https:// The URL to be polled.
send-metrics boolean (true|false) Set this flag to true to enable the URL and its subpages for monitoring. Set to false to turn off monitoring of the URL and its subpages. When a site is added, but monitoring is turned off, then the status shows as Unknown in the dashboard.

Subpage configuration options include the following:

Option Values Description
path string with no leading / character. If you want to monitor the root of a website, set this value to / only. The path to an individual page or root of a website that the connector should monitor.
method string (get|post) The HTTP method that the connector uses to poll the page.

Set site availability monitoring for a specific site

You can set site availability monitoring for specific sites in the configuration file. This setting is useful if you are an administrator overseeing a large number of sites, but don’t want to see all of the sites in the SAM tile.

Note

Whether you set the send_metrics flag to either true or false, Zenoss creates events that are shown in the Events console. However, if the send_metrics flag is set to false, then data for the site doesn’t appear in Smartview.

For these sites, do the following:

  1. Open the configuration file.

  2. Locate or add the URL you don’t want to monitor in the SAM tile of your dashboard.

  3. Set the send-metrics flag to false. This setting turns off monitoring of the URL and its subpages.

    When a site is added, but monitoring is turned off, then the status shows as Unknown.