How to Create Devices and Targets

How It Works

The FTP monitoring agent connects to the specified FTP server, logs on to the FTP server using a username and password you provide, and a directory listing command is issued to retrieve a specific directory. After the contents of that directory are listed, the monitoring service checks if specified files exist on the server in that specific directory. If our remote monitoring agents detect a problem at any point in the process, Dotcom-Monitor will notify you via the notification process.

Creating a Target

FTP over SSH performs the FTP operations over a secure shell if your server supports SFTP.

FTPS requires an SSL/TLS certificate.

Hostname

Enter the FTP server address to be monitored. This could be the URL or the IP address.

Time Validation Threshold (in seconds)

Enter the number of seconds the system should wait for a response from the target resource before returning an error. If this is left blank the default timeout is 120 seconds.

Login to Server

When disabled, Dotcom-Monitor® connects to the destination address and port and checks for a successful connection.

When enabled, the authentication procedure will perform the following steps using the credentials supplied in the Login Information section:

  • User Name: If you have selected Yes for the field Login to Server: enter the username here.
  • Password: If you have selected Yes for the field Login to Server: enter the password associated with the username here.
  • Client Certificate: client certificate name.

To set up a task using a client certificate, please open a support ticket, and attach to the ticket the certificate key file with one of the formats and encryption algorithms that are provided below:

Private key format supported:

  • RSA in OpenSSL PEM, ssh.com and OpenSSH key format
  • DSA in OpenSSL PEM and ssh.com format
  • ECDSA 256/384/521 in OpenSSL PEM and OpenSSH key format
  • ED25519 in OpensSSH key format

Encryption algorithms supported:

  • DES-EDE3-CBC
  • DES-EDE3-CFB
  • DES-CBC
  • AES-128-CBC
  • AES-192-CBC
  • AES-256-CBC

Also, please specify in the ticket what locations the file needs to be installed to. If you need to install the certificate on a Private Agent location, follow the directions from Installing Certificate on Private Agent.

The authentication will be attempted using the following methods:

  • CRAM_MD5
  • Login
  • Plain
  • Simple
  • SSL/TLS

If none of the methods has succeeded unencrypted, the socket switches to SSL and repeats each method until a positive response is received (according to RFC 5034 on authentication mechanisms).

Encryption

The field value defines what method will be used during the monitoring session.

Check Files / Directory Listing

Directory Listing: When enabled–files stored in a directory will be listed. You must set Login to Server to Yes in order to get the directory listing.

  • Directory: Enter a directory you wish to check once you have authenticated to the FTP server. You must be logged in and have set the Directory Listing to Yes in order to check for the existence of a directory.
  • Check File: If you wish to check for the existence of a specific file or set of files, enter the file names in the Check File fields. You must be logged in and set Directory Listing to Yes in order to check a file.

You can use wildcard characters (* or ?) in the filename to represent one or more characters of the file name. For example, “testfile*” would match both testfile1 and testfile2016.

To substitute any string of characters in the file name, use the wildcard character *.

To substitute a single character in a file name, use the question mark wildcard ?.

  • Download File: When the file name is specified – the first 2 MB will be downloaded in order to check accessibility.

DNS Options

The DNS Options feature allows users to choose how domain name server (DNS) requests are conducted during a monitoring task.

To specify the mode of resolving hostnames, in the DNS Resolve Mode section, select one of the available modes. For more details on the feature configuration, see DNS Mode Options.

The Custom DNS Hosts section allows to set up the mapping of IP addresses to hostnames. IPv6 and IPv4 DNS resolution is supported.

To specify the mapping, enter the IP address and the hostname in the corresponding fields.

Examples:

192.168.107.246   example.com user.example.com userauth.example.com tools.example.com
192.168.107.246   example.com
192.168.107.246   user.example.com
192.168.107.246   userauth.example.com

See also: DNS Mode Options.