Secure Email Monitoring

Monitor is a web service that your computers can use to look at the results of a Batch stored on our system. A web service is a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network.

In lay terms, your computer asks Monitor "Did this Batch work?", and Monitor answers with a Yes or No that is easy for your computer to understand (parse).

Real World Use Case

We monitor our own CheckTLS email system. We setup a Batch Thru to compute a total score for how well we both send and receive email. We scheduled the Batch to run every six hours.

Our hosting company uses PRTG to monitor. It uses our Monitor web service to read the LastRun and LastTotal from the Batch, and it alerts us if the test didn't run or if our score falls below 100.

This is the Batch we use: <BatchTest TestType="thru"> <Target>CheckTLS-Reply@CheckTLS.com</Target> <Delivery> <To>File</To> <Format>text</Format> </Delivery> <Total Function="average"></Total> </BatchTest>

This is the XML that Monitor outputs: <CheckTLS test="thru"> <Description>Monitor CheckTLS</Description> <LastRun>2017-02-15T14:54:12-0500</LastRun> <LastTotal>100.000000</LastTotal> </CheckTLS> Click here to fiddle with this Monitor.

Simple and fail-safe email monitoring and verification for the price of a Corporate Subscription to CheckTLS!

FailSafe Monitoring

Using Monitor and Batch, your computers can:

Accessing Batch results as a web service means any or all of the data fields available in //email/testTo: are available to your IT computer systems. You can use CheckTLS tests and tools as part of your own IT system.

Your computers use a specially formatted URL to talk directly with our computers to find out if a Batch worked. Monitor is an "active positive" test, which means everything has to work for it to report "success". If Monitor reports "success" it means three things:

Your Batch
Your Batch did all the testing you put into it and returned your definition of success
Our Tests
Our programming of all the tests and scripting you put into your Batch worked
Our Hosting
Our computers, internet, and data center are all working

If the targets in your Batch don't meet your spec, Monitor returns "unsuccessful". If CheckTLS has any internal errors or fails to run your Batch for any reasons, Monitor returns "unsuccessful". If CheckTLS is down, Monitor does not return anything, which is also "unsuccessful".

The URL your computer uses to talk to our computer includes your User Code, Password, and a BatchId. Monitor uses those to lookup the last time the Batch was run all the way thru and what the final total was. The URL also includes an AGE and a MINIMUM for success.

If the Batch last finished longer ago than the AGE that you specify, Monitor returns "unsuccessful". This prevents false positives. The Batch has to have run all the way to the end within the last AGE minutes to be successful.

If the Batch total was less than the MINIMUM, Monitor returns "unsuccessful". Monitor compares your definition of success (MINIMUM) to the total that you programmed into the Batch (see Batch documentation and edit for more information). You decide what "success" means.

Monitor Modes

Monitor has four modes: XML, CHECK, RAW, and DASHBOARD.

XML Mode

In XML mode, Monitor answers your computer with the raw AGE and TOTAL for the Batch. This lets you program your own rules for success and failure. You decide how bad a failure is and what you want to do about it. Monitor sends this XML document: <CheckTLS test="receiver"> <Description>receiver test on test@checktls.com</Description> <LastRun>2017-02-04T07:36:03-0500</LastRun> <LastTotal>100.000000</LastTotal> </CheckTLS>

The XML elements are very simple:

<CheckTLS>
The XML root node. The test attribute says the Batch was a receiver test (as opposed to a thru test).
<Description>
The Description you gave to the Batch in BatchEdit.
<LastRun>
The date and time the Batch last ran through to the very end.
<LastTotal>
The total you told the Batch to compute (total).
CHECK Mode

In CHECK mode, Monitor looks at the AGE and TOTAL of the Batch for you. It checks if the Batch finished recently enough and if it had a high enough score. You tell Monitor how long ago and what score means "success". Monitor answers your computer with a yes or no.

CHECK Formats

Monitor has three ways to tell your computer if the Batch in question was "successful":

OK/NOK
Monitor replies with a valid web page with a single line: Test OK Test NOT OK The web page is easily parsed by your computer. The complete output looks like: HTTP/1.1 200 OKg Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2017 13:24:34 GMTg Server: Apache/2.4.6 (CentOS) OpenSSL/1.0.1e-fips mod_perl/2.0.9dev Perl/v5.16.3g Age: 64846g Cache-Control: max-age=0g Expires: Fri, 24 Feb 2017 13:24:34 GMTg Transfer-Encoding: chunkedg Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 <html> <head> <title>OK</title> </head> <body> Test OK </body>
ONE/ZERO
Monitor replies with just a 1 or a 0. It is an invalid HTML document that looks like: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2017 13:34:17 GMT Server: Apache/2.4.6 (CentOS) OpenSSL/1.0.1e-fips mod_perl/2.0.9dev Perl/v5.16.3 Age: 65429 Cache-Control: max-age=0 Expires: Fri, 24 Feb 2017 13:34:17 GMT Transfer-Encoding: chunked Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 1
PASS/FAIL
Monitor fails at the web page level, returning an HTTP status 200 or 412 (see HTTP Response Headers) HTTP/1.1 412 Criteria Failed Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2017 13:39:06 GMT Server: Apache/2.4.6 (CentOS) OpenSSL/1.0.1e-fips mod_perl/2.0.9dev Perl/v5.16.3 Age: 65718 Last-Modified: Fri, 24 Feb 2017 13:39:06 GMT Cache-Control: max-age=0 Expires: Fri, 24 Feb 2017 13:39:06 GMT Transfer-Encoding: chunked Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 <html> <head> <title>FAIL</title> </head> <body> Batch failed monitor criteria </body>

Your monitoring system (Nagios, PRTG, WhatsUp Gold, SolarWinds, ManageEngine, DataDog, Zabbix, HP OpenView, etc.) can parse one or more of these, so you can pick the one that works best for you.

Show Results

By setting Show Results to "Y", you can tell Monitor to send you the output from the Batch as well. You get both the CHECK result and the Batch result. See RAW Mode below.

RAW Mode (Batch Results as a Web Service)

In RAW mode, Monitor just sends you the output from the Batch. Since this is the actual output from the Batch in the format specified in the Batch, you choose the format that your computer can parse and use. RAW mode gives you the LastRun date and time in the Age: header and looks like: HTTP/1.1 412 Criteria Failed Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2017 13:42:51 GMT Server: Apache/2.4.6 (CentOS) OpenSSL/1.0.1e-fips mod_perl/2.0.9dev Perl/v5.16.3 Age: 65944 Last-Modified: Fri, 24 Feb 2017 13:42:52 GMT Cache-Control: max-age=0 Expires: Fri, 24 Feb 2017 13:42:51 GMT Transfer-Encoding: chunked Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 <html> <head> <title>FAIL</title> </head> <body> Batch failed monitor criteria <p>Test score is too low</p> <pre><code>100 bill.g@microsoft.com 100 sjobs@apple.com 100 NoOne@NoWhere.com 100 SomeOne@SomeWhere.com 100.000 average </body>

RAW mode is web service access to the results of stored Batches. Since Batch unlocks options that are not available from the web site (Custom), RAW mode is web service access to all CheckTLS.

See Batch Upload for how to create and/or run Batches as a web service.

DASHBOARD Mode

Output from DASHBOARD mode is a mix of webservice and normal HTML, i.e. webpage display. It only works if the result of a stored Batch is in ALERT format. ALERT format lets you define PASS (displayed on green on the DASHBOARD) and FAIL (displayed in red). (see "alert" format in Results File Format for more about ALERT format.

Monitor displays a very simple HTML webpage that looks like:

100
50
50
100
100

This page may be parsed (i.e. used as a webservice), but the format may change in the future.

To use the DASHBOARD without sending any emails (i.e. "alerts"), set the Batch Format to "alerts" but use "file" for the results email address, for example: <To>file</To>

You can show only the failures on the DASHBOARD webpage by using DASHBOARD-FAILURES instead of DASHBOARD.