• Company
    • About Us
    • Case Studies
    • Press Center
    • Events
    • Careers
    • Blog
    • Contact us
  • Contact us
  • Login
 
  • English
    • Deutsch
    • Español
    • Français
    • Italiano
    • Português
Paessler
                    - The Monitoring Experts
  • Products
    • Paessler PRTG
      Paessler PRTGMonitor your whole IT infrastructure
      • PRTG Network Monitor
      • PRTG Enterprise Monitor
      • PRTG Hosted Monitor
      • PRTG extensionsExtensions for Paessler PRTGExtend your monitoring to a new level
    • Icon Features
      FeaturesExplore all monitoring features
      • Maps & dashboards
      • Alerts & notifications
      • Multiple user interfaces
      • Distributed monitoring
      • Customizable reporting
  • Solutions
    • Industries
      IndustriesMonitor various industry sectors
      • Industrial
      • Healthcare
      • Data Center
      • Education
      • Finance
      • Government
    • IT Topics
      IT TopicsMonitor all areas of IT
      • Network Monitoring
      • Bandwidth Monitoring
      • SNMP Monitor
      • Network Mapping
      • WiFi Monitoring
      • Server Monitoring
  • Pricing
  • Resources
    • Getting Started
      Getting StartedModules for self-paced learning
    • How-to Guides
      How-to GuidesGet the most out of PRTG
    • Videos & Webinars
      Videos & WebinarsLearn from Paessler experts
    • IT  Knowledge
      IT KnowledgeExpand your IT knowledge
    • PRTG Manual
      PRTG ManualFull documentation
    • Knowledge Base
      Knowledge BaseShare community knowledge
    • PRTG Sensor Hub
      PRTG Sensor HubGet sensors, scripts & templates
    • Trainings
      PRTG TrainingLearn how to work with PRTG
  • Partners
    • icon star
      New Partners and MSPBecome a new partner or MSP
    • icon partner
      Partner PortalLog in to your partner account
    • Deal Registration
      Deal RegistrationRegister your sales opportunities
    • icon search
      Find a PartnerFind partners selling Paessler products
    • icon technology
      Technology AlliancesSee Paessler technology partnerships
  • Company
    • About Us
    • Case Studies
    • Press Center
    • Events
    • Careers
    • Blog
    • Contact us
  • Contact us
  • Login
  • English
    • Deutsch
    • Español
    • Français
    • Italiano
    • Português
  • Get a quote
  • Free trial
  1. Home>
  2. Resources>
  3. How-to Guides>
  4. How to set up web server monitoring in 3 steps
PRTG Logo

How to set up web server monitoring in 3 steps

Free download
product overview

Setting up web server monitoring: Step-by-Step Guide

Table of content
  • Layer 1: User experience leve
  • Layer 2: Supporting tasks level
  • Layer 3: System or IT level
  • Visualization and notification

A valuable concept is crucial

  • Keep it simple – before you start your web server monitoring, pinpoint the real critical spots in your infrastructure
  • Do multi-site monitoring (= monitoring from multiple locations) to have additional information about your service
  • Use the auto-discovery function to find changes in your IT environment easily
  • Set thresholds to your measurements
  • Define notifications and escalations steps for service critical issues
  • Visualize your KPIs for fast detection of issues or problems

Bring your monitoring experience to the next level with PRTG

Get full visibility with real-time dashboards, alerts, and customizable sensors

Free download
PRODUCT OVERVIEW

Your tool set for web server monitoring

Which components and services are most important? There are three levels of web server monitoring:

Layer 1: User experience level

PRTG offers the following sensors for monitoring content and user experience:

HTTP

These sensors can be used to make sure the website is reachable, also from different locations, and the content is delivered correctly.

  • Sensor HTTP Advanced
  • Sensor HTTP Content
  • Sensor HTTP Full Web Page
  • Sensor HTTP Push Data
  • Sensor HTTP Transaction
  • Sensor HTTP XML/REST Value
  • Sensor Cloud HTTP v2
  • Sensor REST Custom

Specific Services and Application

Get more information about your web servers performance metrics with vendor-specific sensors like:

  • Sensor HTTP Apache ModStatus PerfStats
  • Sensor HTTP Apache ModStatus Totals
  • Sensor Windows IIS Application

Layer 2: Supporting tasks level

PRTG provides several sensors that can be used to monitor each of the following tasks.

icon lock

Security

As security is one of the most important parts of your IT infrastructure, you should know how long your SSL certificate is valid.

  • Sensor SSL Security Check
  • Sensor SSL Certificate
icon load

Authentication and Re-directing

If you provide content and services which needs authentication, make sure this is working and also that your re-directing works as expected.

  • Sensor HTTP Transaction
icon cross

Error Status Codes

Always know your HTTP response codes and create custom notifications for faster troubleshooting

  • Sensor EXE/Script Advanced (find a Knowledge Base article here)
icon backup

Logging and Backup

In case a disaster recovery is needed, you will be happy if the logging and backup worked in the past.

  • Sensor File Content
  • Backup monitoring

Layer 3: System or IT level

At the system/IT level of web server monitoring you monitor hardware devices such as web servers, application servers, database servers, and network devices such as switches and firewalls. The PRTG sensors are divided into two sections.

Server Health sensors

Database

A fast and accessible database is important for your business processes, make sure it is up and running smoothly with our database sensors: 

  • Sensor Microsoft SQL v2
  • Sensor MySQL v2
  • Sensor Oracle SQL v2
  • Sensor PostgreSQL

There are more sensors, but for the same databases.

Server Hardware Health

  • Sensor Ping v2 (Availability)
  • Sensor SNMP CPU Load / Sensor Windows CPU Load
  • Sensor SNMP Memory / Sensor WMI Memory
  • Sensor SNMP Disk Free v2 / Sensor WMI Free Disk Space (Multi Disk)
  • Sensor SNMP Library (custom OID) / Sensor WMI Custom and many more

PRTG provides out-of-box sensors for monitoring physical servers including Dell, HP, IBM and other as well. For more information, please check our list of all available sensor types.

Services

The foundation of your web server application are not only available resources but the running services:

  • Sensor Windows Process
  • Sensor SSH Script
  • Sensor SNMP Windows Service
  • Sensor WMI Service

Network access to base services

Make sure, your web services are accessible over the network and delivered to your customers without degradation.

Traffic

  • Sensor SNMP Traffic
  • Sensor SNMP RMON
  • Sensor Packet Sniffer
  • Flow Sensors 
  • Sensor Windows Network Card

Get to know everything about bandwidth monitoring here.

Access

  • Sensor Port v2
  • Sensor DNS v2
  • Sensor DHCP v2
  • Sensor LDAP

PRTG makes monitoring as easy as it gets

Custom alerts and data visualization let you quickly identify and prevent all kinds of issues

Free download
PRODUCT OVERVIEW

Visualization and notification

To visualize your critical monitoring data easily, or to share monitoring results with colleagues or customers, use PRTG Maps to create dashboards for each interest group. For example, you can create overview maps for management, or detailed maps for administrators.

PRTG infographics device centric
PRTG infographics service centric view

Define KPIs

For the decision what to monitor and what to put on a dashboard, you’ll need to determine which KPIs are most relevant to your business. You might want to include the following monitoring values, but these are specific to each environment, so these are only examples:

  • Server = CPU and Memory load
  • Traffic = Throughput
  • Web = Page load time
  • SQL = SQL query
  • AD = Port response
  • DNS = Check a record
  • DHCP = IP request

Once you’ve decided on the best KPIs for you, you can determine baseline values for each of these KPIs, and then set up thresholds and alerting for each one. Get your proper baseline by monitoring over a period of time that is long enough.

When you know what KPIs are relevant, then you can define SLAs for each one, and then PRTG can monitor and report on whether you’re meeting the SLAs or not.

PRTG offers a very powerful sensor that displays all these information at a glance: The sensor Business Process allows you to get an overall status of a whole business process while monitoring several involved process components. For more information about this sensor, please refer to our Knowledge Base.

  • How does the business process sensor calculate summarized sensor states?
  • How can I use the Business Process sensor for my website front end?
  • How can I use the Business Process sensor for my website back end?

While admins are generally interested in the states and data of every process component, less technical employees of a company often do not need to see more than the summarized status of a process to know if it works or not.

For example, an accounting manager is okay with the information “Our website works fine”, whereas a business infrastructure manager prefers to get exact information about the involved web servers, databases and other hardware and applications.

PRTG Screenshot webserver general map overview
PRTG Screenshot webserver general map overview

Define notifications

  • Define notifications (see how-to guide) and escalation steps for critical issues.
  • Set up notifications so you get alerts immediately when there’s a problem, and use escalation steps to ensure that critical problems are dealt with promptly.
  • You can also use notifications to alert other administrators about planned maintenance.

This how-to guide only scratches the surface?

Get more deep-dive information here!

Preview resource section

Betty's IT Bits: 8 website performance indicators 

view more
Preview blog

10 website performance indicators you should monitor

Read more
Preview manual

Our manual describes PRTG Network Monitor in detail

READ more
PRTG Logo

Start monitoring your IT infrastructure for free with PRTG and see how it can make your network more reliable and your job easier.

Free download
PRODUCT OVERVIEW

Products

  • Paessler PRTG
    Paessler PRTGMonitor your whole IT infrastructure
    • PRTG Network Monitor
    • PRTG Enterprise Monitor
    • PRTG Hosted Monitor
    • PRTG extensions
      Extensions for Paessler PRTGExtend your monitoring to a new level
  • Icon Features
    FeaturesExplore all monitoring features

Monitoring with PRTG

  • Network monitoring
  • Bandwidth monitoring
  • SNMP monitoring
  • Network mapping
  • Wi-Fi monitoring
  • Server monitoring
  • Network traffic analyzer
  • NetFlow monitoring
  • Syslog server

Useful Links

  • PRTG Manual
  • Knowledge Base
  • Customer Success Stories
  • About Paessler
  • Subscribe to newsletter
  • PRTG Support
  • PRTG Consulting
  • PRTG Feedback & Roadmap

Contact

Paessler GmbH
Thurn-und-Taxis-Str. 14, 
90411 Nuremberg 
Germany

info@paessler.com

+49 911 93775-0

  • Contact us
©2025 Paessler GmbHTerms & ConditionsPrivacy PolicyImprintReport VulnerabilityDownload & InstallSitemap
Home Home Home