When you manage multiple digital assets, you must know what you have and their state—especially across complex web ecosystems with apps talking to external endpoints or multi-origin architectures. While inventory/discovery is its own discipline, monitoring known assets is table stakes. Here’s how to approach it.
What is Asset Monitoring?
Whether you’re responsible for one asset or a thousand, monitoring should be part of your administrative toolbox— particularly if your website materially impacts revenue.
The NOC asset monitoring service helps administrators track the health and availability of known assets. An “asset” can be:
- Fully Qualified Domain Name (e.g., noc.org, cleanbrowsing.org)
- IP address
- API endpoints
- Web applications and critical pages
Monitoring focuses on performance and availability, and should cover the end-to-end path users depend on.
Asset Monitoring Deployments
Think about the entire stack—never assume one piece will never fail. A common scenario is a site using a CDN. In this case you should monitor both the CDN edge and the origin host.
Edge vs. Origin
| Component | Description |
|---|---|
| The Edge | The CDN’s network where your content is cached and served globally to improve performance and resilience. |
| The Origin | Your actual host (the source of truth). If origin is down, the CDN may continue serving cached content—masking outages. |
What to Monitor
| Type | What it Tells You |
|---|---|
| HTTP/HTTPS | Simulates a browser request. With a CDN, it primarily reflects edge availability and performance. |
| Ping/ICMP | Network reachability—best to target the origin to confirm it’s alive when the CDN is serving cache. |
Also decide on probe geography: local vs. global checkpoints. Choose regions aligned to your user base.
Adding Monitors with NOC
Add monitors via the Monitoring Dashboard. The UI offers distinct HTTP/HTTPS and Ping options:
HTTP/HTTPS for the domain users visit:
Ping for origin reachability:
In this setup, the HTTP/HTTPS monitor reflects CDN edge health, while Ping verifies the origin is up. You can also choose where to test from (probe locations) based on your audience:
Asset Monitoring is Critical
Monitoring is often under-utilized or misconfigured. We recently worked a case in which the site was effectively down for 12+ hours, yet HTTP checks looked “green” thanks to CDN cache at the edge. New visitors saw cached pages; existing customers couldn’t transact. Monitoring both edge and origin would have surfaced the real issue sooner.
Be thoughtful about the full stack—your customers rely on it. Questions about your deployment? Reach us at support@noc.org.
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