healthchecks/templates/docs/introduction.html

<h1>SITE_NAME Documentation</h1>
<p>SITE_NAME is a service for monitoring cron jobs and similar periodic processes:</p>
<ul>
<li>SITE_NAME <strong>listens for HTTP requests ("pings")</strong> from services being monitored.</li>
<li>It <strong>keeps silent</strong> as long as pings arrive on time.</li>
<li>It <strong>raises an alert</strong> as soon as a ping does not arrive on time.</li>
</ul>
<p>SITE_NAME works as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man%27s_switch">dead man's switch</a> for processes that need to
run continuously or on regular, known schedule. For example:</p>
<ul>
<li>filesystem backups, database backups</li>
<li>task queues</li>
<li>database replication status</li>
<li>report generation scripts</li>
<li>periodic data import and sync jobs</li>
<li>periodic antivirus scans</li>
<li>DDNS updater scripts</li>
<li>SSL renewal scripts</li>
</ul>
<p>SITE_NAME is <em>not</em> the right tool for:</p>
<ul>
<li>monitoring website uptime by probing it with HTTP requests</li>
<li>collecting application performance metrics</li>
<li>error tracking</li>
<li>log aggregation</li>
</ul>