WP Engine Server Monitoring
As a WP Engine customer, it is important to know what WP Engine does behind the scenes to help keep your website online and accessible. In this article we will explain all the monitoring WP Engine takes care of for you, as well as external monitoring options available to you.
Back-End Server Monitoring
WP Engine utilizes an enterprise-class distributed monitoring solution for back-end monitoring on all web servers, regardless of plan type. This software monitors many parameters specific to the health and integrity of the servers. WP Engine’s Operations team uses it to monitor health factors like overall server load, local storage, and database replication (where applicable) on our infrastructure. Our teams also proactively work to resolve any server health issues identified by monitoring services, and contact customers if action is needed on their end. For Enterprise-level customers, WP Engine additionally monitors for 504 status codes to notify you and/or your team if there are significant numbers of dropped requests.
Front-End Monitoring
Synthetic web monitoring is used to monitor front-end uptime by the WP Engine Technical Support and Operations teams for Enterprise-level accounts. This front-end monitoring is included on one domain for each Premium plan. The WP Engine Operations team is notified after a monitoring alert returns an error code after two attempts.
WordPress Application-Level Monitoring
Our internal application level monitoring tool provides real-time performance analytics and can help identify performance issues specific to the application. WP Engine installs this tool on all Premium plans to be used by WP Engine Technical Support and Operations teams.
External Monitoring Options
WP Engine is an extension of your technical team, working around the clock to make sure your server is operating in peak condition. We do have customers who want to have monitoring insights at their fingertips, especially when they are running mission-critical sites on our platform. We have found that the following products are excellent integrations for customers wishing to work alongside WP Engine to monitor their site performance and uptime.
New Relic
New Relic is a powerful diagnostics, monitoring, and alerting tool which individually monitors the health of your WordPress websites and provides key insights into site performance. Customers can contact their Account Manager directly if they would like to install the Application Performance package, or WP Engine Technical Support can install a pre-existing New Relic license you have on your environment if needed.
External Uptime Monitoring Services
Services like Pingdom and Uptime Robot offer external uptime monitoring services which regularly ping your website to ensure it is reachable.
Learn how to setup a Pingdom HTTP check and learn what can trigger an outage.
Learn how to setup Uptime Robot.
If a monitoring server returns an error code, these can be checked against our list of common errors.
While these external tools are entirely managed by you, if you receive an alert from one of these monitoring services and have concerns regarding your site health, please do not hesitate to contact WP Engine Technical Support for assistance.
Integrity Monitoring
Services like Sucuri Security and Stream allow users to monitor any file changes that occur. These tools are plugins which can be downloaded and configured through your WordPress Admin Dashboard. Integrity monitoring is a great tool for ensuring continued security and maximum uptime by increasing your and/or your team’s awareness.
SEO and Analytics
Search engine rankings and traffic are important factors in your website’s overall health. Google Analytics is a powerful data tool that works via JavaScript embedded on your website to monitor user interactions along with your search engine rankings. While this tool is configured entirely external to WP Engine, you can use a plugin such as MonsterInsights.
