Monitoring HTTP availability and response time

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You can configure a data source to monitor the availability and response time of selected URLs. Use a configuration file to define a list of URLs. Set the name of the file in the agent runtime configuration. In IBM Tivoli® Monitoring, you can also use Take Action commands to add and remove monitored URLs. The status for each URL is added as a line in the resulting data set.

About this task

For each URL you monitor, the results provide general information about the HTTP response to the HTTP request. The results include whether it can be retrieved, how long it takes to retrieve, and the size of the response. If the response content is HTML, information is also provided about the page objects within the URL.

You can monitor URLs that use the HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and file protocols. You specify the URLs to monitor in the HTTP URLs file, or through Take Action options.
Important: At the time of release, Take Action commands are not available in an IBM® Cloud Application Performance Management environment. They are available only in a Tivoli Monitoring environment.
This data source requires a Java™ runtime environment. The following versions of Java are supported:
  • Oracle Corporation Java Version 5 or later
  • IBM Corporation Java Version 5 or later

Use the following procedure to create an attribute group to monitor a list of URLs:

Procedure

  1. On the Agent Initial Data Source page or the Data Source Location page, click Data from a server in the Monitoring Data Categories area.
  2. In the Data Sources area, click HTTP.
  3. Click Next.
  4. On the HTTP Information page , select one or more operating systems in the Operating Systems area.
  5. Optional: Click Test to test this attribute group. For more information about testing, see Testing HTTP attribute groups
  6. Optional: Click Advanced to create a filter to limit the data that is returned by this attribute group. For more information about filtering data from an attribute group, see Filtering attribute groups
  7. Do one of the following steps:
    1. If you are using the Agent wizard, click Next.
    2. Click Finish to save the data source and open the Agent Editor.

Results

The HTTP data source creates two attribute groups: Managed URLs and URL Objects. You can add, modify, or delete attributes.