PowerShell

You can use PowerShell and Windows Task Scheduler to automate various tasks on a Windows system. From within a PowerShell script it is also easy to ping SITE_NAME.

Here is a simple PowerShell script that pings SITE_NAME. When scheduled to run with Task Scheduler, it will essentially just send regular "I'm alive" messages. You can of course extend it to do more things.

# inside a PowerShell script:
Invoke-RestMethod PING_URL

Save the above to e.g. C:\Scripts\healthchecks.ps1. Then use the following command in a Scheduled Task to run the script:

powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy bypass -File C:\Scripts\healthchecks.ps1

In simple cases, you can also pass the script to PowerShell directly, using the "-command" argument:

# Without an underlying script, passing the command to PowerShell directly:
powershell.exe -command &{Invoke-RestMethod PING_URL}