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Create a monitor in Pulse

Updated

Overview

A monitor is a recurring check the site collector runs against a device or endpoint. It reports one of three states — Healthy, Failing, or Paused — and those states feed your alert rules. Monitors are how Pulse knows whether a switch, firewall, circuit, or service is actually up.

Monitor Types

  • Ping (ICMP) — is the host reachable?
  • TCP port — is a specific port open and accepting connections?
  • HTTP(S) — does a URL return an expected status / contain expected text?
  • SNMP — poll an OID (interface status, CPU, temperature) using an SNMP credential.

Steps

  1. Open Pulse → Monitors (or open a device and add a monitor from its detail page).
  2. Click Add monitor.
  3. Pick the monitor type and the target (a discovered device, an IP, or a URL).
  4. Set the interval (how often to check) and the timeout.
  5. For SNMP, select the credential to authenticate with and the OID to poll.
  6. Set the failure condition (e.g. N consecutive failures before it flips to Failing).
  7. Save. The monitor begins running on the next collector cycle and shows its live state.

Reading the Monitors Page

The header summarizes the fleet: Total, Healthy, Failing, Paused. Use the search box and the monitor type filter to focus. A Paused monitor isn't checking — pause one during planned maintenance so it doesn't fire alerts.

How To: Turn a Failing Monitor Into a Notification

A monitor only detects a problem; an alert rule decides who hears about it. After creating a monitor, add or confirm an alert rule that targets it (see "Set an Alert Rule"). Without a matching rule, a Failing monitor is visible on the page but won't notify anyone.

Troubleshooting

Monitor is Failing but the device is up. Check the credential (for SNMP), the port (for TCP), and whether the device blocks ICMP (for ping). Confirm the collector for that site is Active — monitors pause when the collector is offline.

Monitor flaps (Healthy ↔ Failing). Increase the consecutive-failure threshold or the timeout, and check the circuit health on Speedtests — a congested link causes intermittent timeouts.

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