App Insights - Website and API Monitoring

Overview:  App Insights has functionality to run scheduled web requests and log the output in App Insights.  There are multiple advantages to this including end to end active monitoring of web sites and API's, and keeping the application warm.

Below I show a simple request to my blog (public website) and the results, Azure refers to this test type as a URL Ping test which is basically a URL HTTP GET request.  

Wait a few minutes and Refresh to see the results:

Very easy way to include a constant check that your API or Website is running.  There is also the options to create "Multi-step web test" using Visual Studio.  You can record the authentication and assert for known response content to build advanced constant monitoring.

Tip: The URL does need to be publicly available.

The content I used to test out the functionality comes from the Microsoft Docs site.

Also see Live Metric Stream that is part of App Insights.

Monitoring using Azure Monitor Dashboards:

• The image above shows a dashboard that can be used to monitor a SaaS applications PaaS Infrastructure.
• It's a good idea to create multiple dashboards and they can show the overview and allow the user to drill into specific areas.
• Internal boards watching key API's, HTTP uptime ping type requests is also a good idea.

Updated: 11 Jan 2023 - Checkly looks like a great monitoring service that works with Playwright for continuous monitoring.  I like to keep all my SaaS on Azure, but Checkly is independent an as it is monitoring.

More Info: 

App Insights MultiStep Tests  Replacement Option for MultiStep Test based on Azure Functions