ControlUp Academy training video
Click here to watch our Academy training video about Synthetic Monitoring.
Synthetic Monitoring (formerly Scoutbees) is a SaaS application that proactively monitors the availability and health of your IT resources to help reduce downtime. It can monitor published EUC resources through gateways such as Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops or Omnissa Horizon, network resources such as web services, APIs and websites, API, or website, and cloud applications like Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory).
There are two main concepts to get familiar with:
Scouts
Hives
Scouts are the proactive tests that you configure to monitor the availability and health of various applications and services. They send data as they test the resource.
Hives are the locations from which the Scouts (tests) are initiated. You can choose from our own managed Cloud Hive locations to test publicly available applications or you can host your own Custom Hive in any location in your network.
Cloud Hives are hosted and managed by us and can be used to initiate a test of publicly available applications, services and hosts, such as VPN gateway, public websites and APIs, public DNS servers, and more.
Custom Hives are distributed executables that encapsulate a Hive's capabilities, and can be used to initiate a test of internal applications, services, and hosts, such as internal websites, internal servers and more.
Dashboard and Alerts
Once a Scout has been initiated for a test, it sends the metric-based data to be processed for visualization, proactive analytics, and alerts. You can see the data relating to the success or failure of the tested connections for each Scout on the dashboard. You can set up alerts for each Scout to be notified based on the conditions that you specify.
Basic Steps Overview
Step 1 - Create Scouts
Click Create Scout from the dashboard to open the Add New Scout window. Select from the following Scout categories:
EUC Scouts tests the availability and health of EUC published resources.
Infrastructure Scouts perform general networking tests.
Application Scouts are designed to test web applications.
Step 2 - Select a Hive
Hives are the location from which the Scout is initiated. Select from two different types of Hives:
Cloud Hives are already set up and can test publicly available gateways.
There are 3 different global locations you can choose from: US, Europe, & Asia.
Since we manage the cloud Hives, there is no set up required for you!
Custom Hives are installed on-premises and let you initiate tests from a custom location. Use Custom Hives to test resources that are not publicly available.
You must have already created a Custom Hive for it to appear as an option. For details, see Installing Custom Hives.
Step 3 - Select the type of Scout
Choose from the following EUC Scouts depending on the type of gateway you want to test. Visit Configuring EUC Scouts to learn how to set up these Scouts:
Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop (click here to watch our Academy training video about the AVD Scout)
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops- Netscaler Gateway
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops - Storefront (this scout can be run only from a Custom Hive)
Citrix Cloud Gateway
Omnissa Horizon (formerly VMware Horizon) Connection Server/UAG
VMware Workspace One
VMware Security Server
Choose from the following Infrastructure Scouts:
Ping. Tests the availability and the packet round-trip time from the Scout’s origination point to the chosen resource.
Traceroute. Tests the available routes taken by packets across an IP network to reach the destination.
DNS Lookup. Tests both the availability and health of DNS servers, and whether the response of a query for a domain in question brings back the desired result.
HTTPS Tests multiple parameters related to website and web services connectivity.
Shell Execution. Executes a user defined shell command.
Microsoft Entra ID. Tests connections to Microsoft Entra ID.
Choose from the following Application Scouts:
Site Load. Tests the loading of a website, providing comprehensive statistics about what content was loaded, and the loading durations.
Microsoft Exchange Online. Tests connections to Microsoft's web-based Exchange servers.
Microsoft Teams. Tests the connection to Microsoft Teams servers to ensure that users in your network are able to access Teams and have a high call quality.
Web Transactions. Simulates a user's interactions with a SaaS application or any other website.
Step 4 - Create Alerts
Set up alerts for your Scouts so that you are notified as soon as something goes wrong.
An alert policy consists of one or more conditions that are joined together with AND or OR statements. Once these conditions have been met for a specified number of subsequent tests, and from the specified hives, an alert will be sent to notify you of the issue. Alert policies can be integrated with Microsoft Teams and Service now, and trigger webhooks.
For details, see Alert Policies.
Step 5 - View Results on the Dashboard
Once your Scouts are set up and collecting data, you can view the metrics on the Synthetic Monitoring dashboard. You can:
View Scouts according to the selected Scout Type and time period.
Apply filters to adjust which Scouts are displayed.
Open a specific Scout to view additional details.
Edit Scouts and alert policies.
For details, see Views, Details and Filtering.
User Authentication
Synthetic Monitoring monitors user authentication and supports MFA and the following Identity Providers (IdPs):
EUC scouts
EUC scouts support the following four IdPs:
Okta (MFA not supported)
Duo (only SMS MFA supported)
Ping Identity (only SMS MFA supported)
Entra ID (MFA supported)
Mail Application and Entra ID Scouts
For the Mail Application scout (under Application) and the Entra ID scout (OAuth type only, under Infrastructure), users authenticate and then Synthetic Monitoring uses their access token to run the tests.
Other scouts
All remaining scouts don’t use IdPs for authentication.