Set up threshold-based alarms across host availability, port availability, SSL/TLS certificates, website, FTP transfer, and webpage load monitors so Cloudmon notifies your team or triggers automated actions the moment a check fails or a metric breaches its defined limit.
Each Synthetic monitor type has its own set of available metrics tied directly to what that monitor measures. Host Availability alarms fire on reachability, latency, jitter, and packet loss. Port Availability alarms fire on TCP connection success, response time, and error rate. SSL/TLS alarms fire on certificate expiry, grade, and validity. Website alarms fire on HTTP status codes, response time, availability, and content checks. FTP Transfer alarms fire on connection availability and response time. Webpage Load alarms fire on full browser render time and page load performance. Alarm rules are configured directly on each individual monitor in its Settings.
Each alarm is built around a simple IF/THEN model, where you select a metric, set a threshold, and define what happens when it is breached. Learn more.
Below are recommended alarm configurations across all Synthetic monitor types:
| Use Case | Monitor Type | Metric | Suggested Threshold | Why |
| Host unreachable | Host Availability | Availability | Below 100% for 1 interval | A single missed ICMP or TCP check is a strong signal that the host has gone offline, a firewall rule has changed, or the network path has been disrupted. |
| High latency to a branch or remote host | Host Availability | Response Time | Above baseline for 3 intervals | Sustained high latency to a branch office router indicates WAN congestion or a link degradation that will impact application performance for users at that site. |
| Packet loss on a critical path | Host Availability | Packet Loss | Above 5% for 2 intervals | Packet loss causes retransmissions, session drops, and degraded VoIP or video quality before the link fully fails and availability drops to zero. |
| Service port down or not responding | Port Availability | Availability | Below 100% for 1 interval | A closed or unresponsive port means a service has crashed or the firewall has blocked it. The host may still be pingable, making this invisible without dedicated port monitoring. |
| Slow TCP connection to an application service | Port Availability | Response Time | Above 2000ms for 3 intervals | A high TCP handshake time on a database port or API endpoint indicates server-side connection queue pressure that will cause application timeouts before users report errors. |
| Certificate expiring soon | SSL/TLS | Validity Days Remaining | Below 30 days for 1 interval | An expired certificate causes immediate browser errors and breaks HTTPS connections for all users. A 30-day warning gives teams enough time to renew even if the first attempt fails. |
| Certificate security grade degraded | SSL/TLS | Certificate Grade | Below A for 1 interval | A grade below A indicates weak ciphers, missing forward secrecy, or deprecated protocol support that creates a security risk and may fail compliance requirements. |
| Website down or returning an error | Website | Availability | Below 100% for 1 interval | A single availability failure means the URL returned a non-success status code or timed out. For a public-facing website, this means users are seeing errors right now. |
| Website response time degrading | Website | Response Time | Above 3000ms for 2 intervals | A response time above 3 seconds causes significant user abandonment on web applications and e-commerce sites. Catching sustained slowdowns early allows investigation before users report problems. |
| Website returning unexpected status code | Website | Status Code | Not equal to 200 for 1 interval | A 4xx or 5xx response from a monitored URL indicates an application error, misconfiguration, or deployment issue that may not show as a full outage but is actively serving errors to users. |
| FTP transfer unavailable or failing | FTP Transfer | Availability | Below 100% for 1 interval | A failed FTP connection check means the server is unreachable, the credentials have changed, or the FTP service has stopped. Critical for environments that rely on scheduled file transfers for backups, EDI, or data pipelines. |
| Slow FTP transfer response | FTP Transfer | Response Time | Above baseline for 3 intervals | Sustained high FTP response times indicate server-side resource contention or network congestion on the transfer path, which can cause batch file transfer jobs to time out. |
| Webpage load time degrading | Webpage Load | Page Load Time | Above 5000ms for 2 intervals | A full browser render time above 5 seconds significantly impacts user experience and search rankings. Unlike simple HTTP checks, this catches slowdowns caused by third-party scripts, heavy assets, or render-blocking resources that only appear when the full page is loaded in a real browser context. |
Once saved, all triggers for a Synthetic monitor are listed in the Triggers table under the Alarm Rule section in that monitor's Settings. Each row shows the trigger title, alarm severity, notification configuration, and linked services. Triggers can be edited or deleted at any time using the action icons on the right.
All active alarms for a Synthetic monitor are visible under the Alarms tab within the monitor detail page, and in the global Alarms view under the Alarms menu in the navigation bar.