Getting Started with Synthetic Monitoring

Docs > Getting Started > Getting Started with Synthetic Monitoring

Overview

Synthetic tests allow you to observe how your systems and applications are performing using simulated requests and actions from around the globe. Datadog tracks the performance of your webpages and APIs from the backend to the frontend, and at various network levels (HTTP, SSL, DNS, WebSocket, TCP, UDP, ICMP, and gRPC) in a controlled and stable way, alerting you about faulty behavior such as regressions, broken features, high response times, and unexpected status codes.

Synthetic test types

Datadog offers API tests, Multistep API tests, Browser tests, and Mobile tests.

To monitor internal-facing applications, run your tests from managed locations or private locations. Synthetic tests can be triggered manually, on a schedule, or directly from your CI/CD pipelines.

Prerequisites

If you haven’t already, create a Datadog account.

Configure your first test

To set up your first Synthetic test with Datadog, choose from the following options:

Create an API test to start monitoring your API endpoints’ uptime.
Create a multistep API test to link several HTTP requests and start monitoring key workflows at the API level.
Create a browser test to start testing critical business transactions on your applications.
Create a mobile test to start testing key business workflows on your Android and iOS applications.
Create a private location to start monitoring internal applications using all Synthetic test types.