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Animesh
Asked: 2010-05-12 13:46:05 +0800 CST

How can we monitor a HTTPS URL?

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A couple of our recent customers have had their applications configured for HTTPS only. Currently we are using a tool which does a good job of monitoring customers' app-server state. For the existing customers, HTTP URLs also work, so the tool can monitor the health. But the recent one have only the HTTPS enabled so the tool fails automatically.

To this end, I am looking for a tool which would monitor the app-server state and send email to the group.

Simple monitoring like checking to see if the app-server is up or not is all I would need. But more features are also definitely helpful.

Thanks!

monitoring

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I generally just create a login with no real privileges and then script that check to log in to the website. Often it can be done with a simple POST request. What monitoring application do you use? For Nagios the only real difference when using HTTPS is that you have to add a switch to the check_http command (and maybe add another to accept a bad cert, that is kind of a bad idea though).

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  2. Circonus (http://circonus.com/) supports HTTPS checks. Here are some of the metrics it returns (that you can graph or set alerts on). This is a real example.

    • bytes [0] - Bytes received
    • cert_end [1293988511] - SSL Expire on (epoch)
    • cert_end_in [20190421] - Certificate time until expire (seconds)
    • cert_error [] - SSL Error
    • cert_issuer [/C=US/O=Equifax/OU=Equifax Secure Certificate Authority] - SSL Issuer
    • cert_start [1228238111] - SSL Issued on (epoch)
    • cert_subject [/C=US/ST=New Jersey/L=Secaucus/O=Etsy, Inc./CN=*.etsy.com] - SSL Subject
    • code [302] - Response Code
    • duration [170] - Duration, total (ms)
    • tt_connect [9] - Duration, initial connect (ms)
    • tt_firstbyte [168] - Duration, first byte (ms)

    As you can see, not only are typical HTTP metrics returned, but you also get stuff like SSL Expire on (monitor your cert expiration), SSL Subject (monitor for changes), Response Code and Total Duration.

    • 2

  3. Monitoring HTTPS should be the same as monitoring HTTP other than the port and the SSL encryption. The monitors I have used all supported HTTPS either through a switch or a dedicated plugin. SSL doesn't work with some of the lightwieght monitors.

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