Core Concepts

This page explains the fundamental concepts you need to understand to effectively use tracer.

What is Synthetic Monitoring?

Synthetic monitoring (also called active monitoring or proactive monitoring) uses scripted transactions to simulate user behavior. Unlike Real User Monitoring (RUM), which tracks actual user sessions, synthetic monitoring runs automated checks on a schedule.

Benefits of Synthetic Monitoring

Synthetic vs. Real User Monitoring

Monitors

A monitor is a scheduled check that validates some aspect of your application. tracer supports several monitor types:

URL Monitors

The simplest form of monitoring. Makes an HTTP/HTTPS request and validates the response.

Use cases:

• Health check endpoints
• API availability
• Website uptime

API Monitors

Multi-step HTTP workflows that can extract variables and chain requests.

Use cases:

• Authentication flows
• CRUD operations
• API contract testing

TCP Monitors

Validates that a TCP port is accessible and optionally checks TLS certificates.

Use cases:

• Database connectivity
• SMTP server availability
• Custom service ports

DNS Monitors

Validates DNS records return expected values.

Use cases:

• DNS propagation verification
• Record correctness
• Failover configuration

Heartbeat Monitors

Passive monitors that expect periodic pings from your services.

Use cases:

• Cron job monitoring
• Batch process verification
• Scheduled task validation

Browser Journeys

Playwright-based browser automation that executes multi-step user flows.

Use cases:

• Login flow testing
• Checkout process validation
• Form submission verification
• Visual regression testing

Runs

A run is a single execution of a monitor. Each run produces:

• Status: success, failure, or degraded
• Duration: Total execution time
• Metrics: Response time, DNS time, TLS time, etc.
• Assertions: Pass/fail results for each validation
• Artifacts: Screenshots and traces (for journeys)

Run Status

Agents

Agents are the workers that execute your monitors. tracer provides managed agents across multiple geographic regions.

Managed Agents

Our cloud-hosted agents run in:

• US East (Virginia)
• US West (Oregon)
• EU West (Ireland)
• EU Central (Frankfurt)
• Asia Pacific (Singapore)
• Turkey (Istanbul)

Private Agents

For monitoring internal services or on-premise infrastructure, you can deploy private agents within your network. Private agents:

• Run inside your firewall
• Can access internal endpoints
• Report results back to tracer
• Support all monitor types

Alerts

Alerts notify you when something goes wrong. An alert system consists of:

Alert Channels

Where notifications are sent:

• Slack - Messages to a Slack channel
• Email - Email notifications
• Webhook - HTTP POST to your endpoint
• Microsoft Teams - Teams channel notifications

Alert Rules

Conditions that trigger alerts:

Alert Lifecycle

1. Triggered - Condition met, notification sent
2. Acknowledged - Team member is investigating
3. Resolved - Issue fixed, recovery notification sent

Organizations & Teams

tracer supports multi-tenant organization structure:

Organizations

Top-level container for all your monitoring resources. Each organization has:

• Unique subdomain
• Billing plan
• Team members
• Projects and monitors

Roles

Projects

Group related monitors together for better organization:

• Production services
• Staging environment
• API endpoints
• Customer-facing apps

Next Steps

Now that you understand the concepts, try:

1. Create your first monitor
2. Set up browser journeys
3. Configure alerts