Http browser is not creating any monitors

Elastic Observability Synthetics
1

Hello, I was trying to create http browser monitor and when I push it using GitHub Actions, it's not creating any monitors in the ELK synthetics.

We are using ELK version 8.10.3. Does this version support creating browser monitors using http heartbeats?

2

Hi @Sandy_K,

Lightweight HTTP heartbeat monitors are supported in 8.10. Do you mean those versus scripted browser monitors?

Are you following the getting started? Do you see any errors in your push command?

3

Hi @carly.richmond,

My use case is to schedule the browser monitors using cron jobs but scheduling the scripted browser monitors through journeys (cron jobs) is not supported. Since lightweight monitors support cron scheduling, I wanted to try and create browser lightweight heartbeats through projects (@elastic/synthetics). I'm following the example Elastic Heartbeats

I see no error when I try to push them through GitHub Action workflows. It simply doesn't recognize that the monitor is created.

4

Ok, have you checked out the troubleshooting steps in the documentation? Do you have any monitors created pre 8.8.0?

5

We haven't created any monitors pre 8.8.0 version.

This is the first time we are creating monitors in ELK synthetics. I'll try to check out the troubleshooting steps if that works out. Thanks for sharing.

@carly.richmond - Can we run the heartbeat monitors locally using Synthetics CLI ?

6

Hi @Sandy_K - are you trying to use project monitors?

I'm not fully understanding what you're trying to accomplish and how you're going about it.

7

Hi @jkambic,

I'm trying to create browser monitors using lightweight heartbeat monitors by following this example Elastic Synthetics.

Why I chose to create browser monitors through Lightweight monitors is that the journeys currently don't support the scheduling using cron jobs ( For Ex: "1-59/5 * * * *"), it supports only numbers in Journeys.

So, when I looked into the above example, it was shown that we can create browser type monitors from the heartbeat.yml file. I have tried that and unable to create any monitor in ELK Synthetics.

8

I see - thanks for providing a link to what you're trying to use.

What is your strategy for running the lightweight monitor. You've mentioned GitHub Actions, what is this Action trying to do? Do you have a repository set up for your lightweight monitors that you push to, and whenever a push happens that Action is supposed to deploy the changes to a Kibana instance?

9

@jkambic - That's exactly correct, we have a repo set up for both journeys and lightweights and pushing them using the command "npx @elastic/synthetics push" in our action workflow which will deploy our changes to ELK Synthetics.

The strategy is to try and schedule the browser monitors from heartbeats using cron jobs scheduling.

10

@jkambic and @carly.richmond --

Does the heartbeat still support creating browser monitor as type? For example as shown below:

heartbeat.monitors:
  - type: browser
    id: my-monitor
    name: My Monitor
    schedule: '@every 1m'
    source:
      inline:
        script: |-
11

You can't create an inline monitor using the lightweight config feature. Those need to be defined in the journeys directory. The lightweight YAML files are just for configuring http/tcp/icmp checks.

12

Yeah, that's what I figured. Thanks @jkambic for checking it.

13

@Sandy_K I'm interested in understanding the use case of requiring cron scheduling, are you trying to run your monitors more frequently than 1m?

In the cron you included it looks like you need a 5m offset?

14

Hey @jkambic,

We have 3 tests which are UI apps utilizing SSO login, and they are using the same user account to login. When the monitors are created in the ELK using synthetic journeys, at least one of them or all of them are failing sporadically due to the user session maxed out error.

Our idea of going to cron jobs scheduling is to execute/run the monitors periodically spaced out so that the applications cannot get conflicted when the user is trying to login to the application. Since the journeys can only be scheduled using numeric type, I thought of using heartbeats to create browser monitors as scheduling using cron jobs is allowed. Unfortunately, creation of the browser monitors through heartbeats is discontinued from your previous reply.