HTTP check receiver

Use the HTTP check receiver to perform synthethic checks against HTTP endpoints.

Use the HTTP check receiver to perform synthethic checks against HTTP endpoints. The supported pipeline type is metrics. See Process your data with pipelines for more information.

The receiver makes a request to the specified endpoint and generates a metric with a label for each HTTP response status class with a value of 1 if the status code matches the class. For example, the receiver generates the following metrics if the endpoint returns a 200:

httpcheck.status{http.status_class:1xx, http.status_code:200,...} = 0
httpcheck.status{http.status_class:2xx, http.status_code:200,...} = 1
httpcheck.status{http.status_class:3xx, http.status_code:200,...} = 0
httpcheck.status{http.status_class:4xx, http.status_code:200,...} = 0
httpcheck.status{http.status_class:5xx, http.status_code:200,...} = 0

Get started

Follow these steps to configure and activate the component:

Deploy the Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector to your host or container platform:
Configure the receiver as described in the next section.
Restart the Collector.

Sample configuration

To activate the receiver, add httpcheck to the receivers section of your configuration file:

receivers:
  httpcheck:

To complete the configuration, include the receiver in the metrics pipeline of the service section of your configuration file:

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [httpcheck]

Advanced configuration

The following configuration settings are available:

targets. Required. The list of targets to be monitored.
collection_interval. Optional. 60s by default. This receiver collects metrics on an interval. Valid time units are ns, us (or µs), ms, s, m, h.
initial_delay. Optional. 1s by default. Defines how long this receiver waits before starting.

Each target has the following properties:

endpoint. Required. The URL to be monitored.
method. Optional. GET by default. The HTTP method used to call the endpoint.

See Settings for more details. Additionally, targets also support the configuration options listed in HTTP config options for the Collector in GitHub.

Configuration example

See the following example:

receivers:
  httpcheck:
    targets:
      - endpoint: http://endpoint:80
        method: GET
      - endpoint: http://localhost:8080/health
        method: GET
      - endpoint: http://localhost:8081/health
        method: POST
        headers:
          test-header: "test-value"
    collection_interval: 10s

Metrics

The following metrics, resource attributes, and attributes are available.

Note: The SignalFx exporter excludes some available metrics by default. Learn more about default metric filters in List of metrics excluded by default.

included

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/splunk/collector-config-tools/main/metric-metadata/httpcheckreceiver.yaml

Activate or deactivate specific metrics

You can activate or deactivate specific metrics by setting the enabled field in the metrics section for each metric. For example:

receivers:
  samplereceiver:
    metrics:
      metric-one:
        enabled: true
      metric-two:
        enabled: false

The following is an example of host metrics receiver configuration with activated metrics:

receivers:
  hostmetrics:
    scrapers:
      process:
        metrics:
          process.cpu.utilization:
            enabled: true

Note: Deactivated metrics aren’t sent to Splunk Observability Cloud.

Billing

If you’re in a MTS-based subscription, all metrics count towards metrics usage.
If you’re in a host-based plan, metrics listed as active (Active: Yes) on this document are considered default and are included free of charge.

Learn more at Infrastructure Monitoring subscription usage (Host and metric plans).

Settings

The following table shows the configuration options for the HTTP check receiver:

included

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/splunk/collector-config-tools/main/cfg-metadata/receiver/httpcheck.yaml

Troubleshooting

If you are a Splunk Observability Cloud customer and are not able to see your data in Splunk Observability Cloud, you can get help in the following ways.

Available to Splunk Observability Cloud customers

Submit a case in the Splunk Support Portal.
Contact Splunk Support.

Available to prospective customers and free trial users

Ask a question and get answers through community support at Splunk Answers.
Join the Splunk community #observability Slack channel to communicate with customers, partners, and Splunk employees worldwide.