What is heartbeat monitoring?

Heartbeat monitoring reverses the usual direction of a check. Instead of a monitor asking your site whether it is up, your job sends a small request to the monitor each time it runs, and you are alerted when the expected request does not arrive.

When is heartbeat monitoring useful?

For work that has no web page to check: scheduled backups, imports, report emails and cron jobs. An uptime check cannot tell you that last night's backup did not run, but a missing heartbeat can.

How does it work?

You create a heartbeat with an expected interval and a grace period. At the end of the job, it calls the heartbeat's address. If no call arrives within the interval plus grace, the monitor sends an alert.

How is it different from an uptime check?

An uptime check proves a service answers now. A heartbeat proves that something happened on schedule. Most client sites need the first, and sites with backups or scheduled tasks benefit from both. See how to set up uptime monitoring.

Where Datumboard fits

Datumboard puts the signals behind this in one dashboard for your client sites and side projects. It is in early access, and you can join the list below.