Is it possible to execute monitors on predefined time intervals?
Q: I would like to have a monitor run at certain date and time intervals, is it possible?
A: yes, to some extent; below we list possible options.
Maintenance mode
Hosts may be assigned a maintenance schedule; when on maintenance, no monitors of the host may generate alerts. Monitoring may be allowed during maintenance, but there will be no alerts, regardless of monitors state.
The above gives a general tool to allow monitoring only within predefined intervals. Outside of maintenance, host’s monitors will behave as usual; while on maintenance, no monitors of affected hosts will generate alerts.
As an example, let’s assume we wish to monitor example.com site between 13 and 14, on business days only.
Note: maintenance mode should cover all the time intervals when monitoring should not happen. To begin defining maintenance interval, let’s create its schedule first. Start IPHost GUI client and proceed to “Settings > Schedules”. After that, let’s create a sample schedule by clicking “New” button:
Note: please pay attention that this schedule doesn’t include intervals 13:00 to 14:00 on business days; those intervals won’t be covered by maintenance and thus alerting/monitoring during those will be allowed.
After we are done with schedule, let’s create proper maintenance definition. Proceed to “Settings > Maintenance”, select host to apply maintenance to and choose the previously created schedule:
If it’s really necessary, check “Continue monitoring during maintenance”. Otherwise, monitoring will pause while maintenance in effect, and host/monitors will be marked with corresponding maintenance icon in IPHost client.
While using maintenance doesn’t exactly allow executing monitors on strict schedules, it gives quite close approximation of that.
Further considerations
Another approach of getting monitoring data on schedules basis is to generate it on regular basis using OS typical tools (such as Cron jobs in Unix-like systems, or Scheduled tasks in Windows), and only use monitor to read that performance value. That way, regardless of actual monitor execution time, it will only provide performance values taken on predefined schedule.
