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Heartbeat Sensor

Overview

Subscription

This sensor is only available with Pro and Entreprise subscriptions

The Heartbeat Sensor in Onagre is designed to ensure that a system or service is regularly active and reporting its status. Instead of actively polling a resource, this sensor waits for periodic signals (heartbeats) sent by an external system. If no heartbeat is received within the expected time frame, an alert is triggered, indicating a potential failure or downtime.

Configuration Options

When setting up a Heartbeat Sensor, the following parameters can be configured:

  • Heartbeat URL: A unique endpoint provided by Onagre when the sensor is created. The monitored service must send requests to this URL.
  • Expected Interval: Defines how often the monitored system should send a heartbeat signal (e.g., every minute, every five minutes). This value determines when an alert will be triggered if no heartbeat is received within this interval.
  • Offset: Allows a small delay window before marking a missed heartbeat as a failure.

Response Validation

The Heartbeat Sensor validates health checks based on:

  • Regularity of Heartbeats: Ensures the monitored system is sending requests at the configured interval.

Alerts and Notifications

If the expected heartbeat is not received within the defined time frame, the sensor can trigger alerts via:

  • Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Google Chat, Webhooks, Pushover
  • Email Notifications
  • Onagre’s Dashboard for Incident Tracking

Use Cases

  • Monitoring background jobs and scheduled tasks to ensure they are running.
  • Ensuring that automated scripts or batch processes execute at the expected intervals.
  • Detecting failures in long-running processes or microservices.
  • Monitoring IoT devices or embedded systems that periodically report status.

Deployment

The Heartbeat Sensor can be used with both public and private resources. Onagre provides a dedicated heartbeat endpoint that monitored services can call via an HTTP POST request.

Summary

The Heartbeat Sensor is a powerful tool for ensuring that periodic tasks and processes are running as expected. By leveraging passive monitoring through received signals, it helps teams detect service failures without requiring constant polling, improving efficiency and reliability.