# X-Pack Alerting for HTTP(S) health checks

**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/x-pack-alerting-for-http-s-health-checks/78920
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [March 16, 2017, 6:38pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/x-pack-alerting-for-http-s-health-checks/78920 "2017-03-16T18:38:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![mjfroehlich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/90db22/32.png) [@mjfroehlich](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/mjfroehlich)
#### Post date: [March 16, 2017, 6:38pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/x-pack-alerting-for-http-s-health-checks/78920/1 "2017-03-16T18:38:46Z")

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Hi,

I looked into implementing HTTP(S) health checks using X-Pack.

Problem: I didn't find a way to send a notification if a host was unresponsive. If executing the watch input fails, no actions are ever triggered, regardless of conditions.

Is there a way to do this now/is this something you're considering for the (near) future/should I look somewhere else?

Thanks,  
Martin

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### Author: ![skearns](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/skearns/32/125945_2.png) [@skearns](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/skearns)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2017, 1:07pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/x-pack-alerting-for-http-s-health-checks/78920/2 "2017-03-17T13:07:22Z")

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Indeed, this is something that we're looking at changing in the future - so the response codes from an input would be available for conditions, etc., but for now I think you have a few options.

Every time a watch executes, we create a watch history document, which will contain the input error. This means you could create a second watch to look at the watch history and decide to alert or not

My recommended approach is actually a bit different: Use [Heartbeat](https://www.elastic.co/products/beats/heartbeat) to do the health checking, and build a watch to look at it's output. Heartbeat is a lot more robust and has a number of useful options.

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### Author: ![mjfroehlich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/90db22/32.png) [@mjfroehlich](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/mjfroehlich)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2017, 1:31pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/x-pack-alerting-for-http-s-health-checks/78920/3 "2017-03-17T13:31:51Z")

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Thanks, Steve. Will check out Heartbeat!

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### Author: ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2017, 1:31pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/x-pack-alerting-for-http-s-health-checks/78920/4 "2017-04-14T13:31:58Z")

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