Glossary · Observability

What Is Synthetic Monitoring?

Synthetic monitoring catches problems with scripted robots before your users do; RUM measures what real users actually experience.

Synthetic monitoring proactively tests endpoints and user journeys with scripted probes on a schedule, from outside the system, to detect availability and performance problems before real users hit them.

How it works

You define probes, an HTTP check, an API call, or a scripted multi-step user journey, and run them on a schedule from one or more locations. Each run measures availability and response time, so you learn about an outage or slowdown even at 3am when no real user is active, and you can measure from geographies your users are in.

Synthetic versus real user monitoring

Synthetic monitoring is proactive and consistent (the same scripted check every time), which makes it good for uptime SLAs and catching regressions before launch. Real user monitoring is reactive and representative (whatever actual users do). They are complementary: synthetics for early warning and consistency, RUM for real experience.

How it fits Ops Singularity

Synthetic probes are one more signal Ops Singularity can ingest, giving Sentinel AI an early, consistent indicator of availability alongside real telemetry.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between synthetic and real user monitoring?

Synthetic uses scripted probes on a schedule to test proactively; RUM measures the experience of actual users. They complement each other.

Can synthetic monitoring catch problems before users?

Yes, that is its main value: scheduled probes detect outages and slowdowns even when no real user is currently active.

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