Key concepts in Splunk Synthetic Monitoring 🔗

These key concepts help you get the most out of your experience with Splunk Synthetic Monitoring.

Concept	Description
Synthetic Monitoring	A monitoring technique to test site or application performance by generating simulated user behavior from a variety of geographic locations, devices, and connection types and by measuring response times and other performance metrics. This level of monitoring lets you proactively measure how your webpages are performing without needing to rely on data generated by real users, so that you can identify and fix problems before they affect user experience or application revenue.
Synthetics	A common abbreviation for Synthetic Monitoring.
Tests	Tests are the primary mechanism of application monitoring in Splunk Synthetic Monitoring. You can set up Browser, Uptime, and API tests to run at your preferred frequency from the devices and public locations of your choosing.
Runs	Each occurrence of a test from a particular device and location at a specific time is called a run. Each run of a test captures a set of metrics and diagnostics that provide insight into your application’s performance.
Metrics	Numeric indicators of site performance that synthetic tests capture in each run of a test. See the following links for the lists of metrics available for each test type: - Browser test metrics - Uptime test metrics - API test metrics
Browser tests	Synthetic tests that simulate and analyze the user experience of loading a page or performing a workflow on a site or application.
Uptime tests	Synthetic tests that monitor the response time and response code of HTTP requests and server ports.
API tests	Synthetic tests that monitor the functionality and performance of API endpoints.
Waterfall charts	A visualization that represents the performance of resources on a webpage in a Browser test.
Devices	Options to configure the viewport and network connection type of your tests. For example, you can test a webpage from a laptop screen or a smartphone.
Viewport	Browser tests in Splunk Synthetic Monitoring capture the visual experience of a user interacting with your application. The viewport is the framed area on a device’s screen for viewing information, such as the browser window on a desktop. When you set up a test, you can choose the viewport size from a list of common devices, or set a custom viewport by height and width.
Network connection	You can run Browser, Uptime or API tests to simulate network connections of various latencies, including Mobile LTE, Mobile 3G, DSL, and cable internet. Testing your site from a variety of connection types lets you monitor the experience of users in a variety of settings.
Public Locations	Global checkpoints from which you can synthetically run tests to simulate performance for users in that location.

Learn more 🔗

To learn more about Splunk Synthetic Monitoring, see the following topics:

This page was last updated on Oct 04, 2023.

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