Ignoring Minor Downtime - Documentation

You can ignore minor downtime by configuring the Alert to be sent only after a certain number of checks have failed. This helps prevent alert fatigue and reduces the number of false positives triggered by brief interruptions.

Change the Alert after setting of an alert from the Alerts tab of a monitor to do this.
Example

Let's say you are monitoring a web server, and you want to receive an alert only if the server remains down for more than 3 consecutive checks, where each check is performed every 5 minutes.

To do this you would set the Alert after setting to 3rd failed check.

Now, with this configuration in place, here's how the alerting would work:

  • If the web server goes down for 1 or 2 consecutive checks (5 or 10 minutes), no alert is triggered.
  • If the web server remains down for 3 consecutive checks (15 minutes), an alert is triggered and sent to the designated recipient(s).
  • If the web server comes back online before reaching the threshold of 3 consecutive failed checks, no alert is triggered.

This configuration helps filter out brief downtime or intermittent issues that may resolve themselves quickly, reducing unnecessary alerts while still ensuring that you're notified of more significant problems that persist over time. Adjusting the number of consecutive checks allows you to tailor the alerting behavior to your specific needs and tolerance for minor downtime.