Monitoring glossary
Short, plain definitions of the terms you meet when you monitor cron jobs, workers and other background work. Each page explains the term, shows an example and lists the mistakes people make with it.
- Check-inThe request a job sends to its monitor to say that it ran. Many tools call it a ping.
- Dead man's switchA mechanism that acts when an expected signal stops arriving. In monitoring, silence is the alert.
- Grace periodThe extra time a monitor waits after a job was due before it calls the run missed.
- HeartbeatA signal a running process sends at a regular interval to show it is still alive and working.
- Missed runA run that was expected but never reported in, so it left no error behind.
- Silent failureA failure that raises no error and no alert, so it is only found when someone misses the result.
Put the terms to work
Get an alert when a job does not check in.
Drumbeats watches your cron jobs and workers and tells you when a run is missed or fails. No agent to install, free for up to 50 monitors.
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