Hindsight is the name of our proprietary monitoring system that collects data from unresponsive servers.
Overview
Hindsight is the name of our proprietary monitoring system that collects data from unresponsive servers. It then reports its findings to its companion system, Foresight, which uses that data to identify problems before they cause a full or extended outage.
Hindsight attempts to load HTML for a page from your website every 60 seconds. If the query results in a non-200 error code, Hindsight performs a full page load, records key data, and sends it to our data management system for analysis.
Frequently asked questions
Is Hindsight available for Nexcess Cloud?
No, Hindsight is available only for non-cloud accounts.
Can I view alert data for my site?
At this time, alert data for a service is not available to our clients. If the monitoring team investigates an alert, they may contact you if resolving the issue requires action on your part.
How long does Hindsight keep historical alert data?
Hindsight keeps a complete history of all alerts generated by the monitored system.
Are all sites hosted on my account being monitored by Hindsight?
It depends on your type of service.
For shared hosting services, Hindsight only monitors the server’s default index.html page. or example, http://sip3-XXX.nexcess.net/index.html. This addresses the most common cause of outages, overloaded Apache web servers. It is also possible for our team to add other domains (master, secondary, sub, pointer).
For dedicated or cluster services, Hindsight monitors one master domain per hosting package, though it must receive traffic to be monitored. If your dedicated or cluster service makes use of multiple SiteWorx accounts, Hindsight monitors the first master domain it discovered receiving traffic.
Will Hindsight alert if my site is behind a DDoS mitigation service or proxy?
Hindsight currently does not generate reports for error codes generated by proxy services. Additionally, if your proxy is configured to serve a cached copy of your page when your site is unavailable, this may prevent Hindsight alerts during DDoS attacks. We are constantly working to improve Hindsight, so this may change at a later date.
How can I verify Hindsight is checking my site?
You find Hindsight’s user agent in your transfer logs, accessible through your SIteWorx control panel. These logs can be accessed through your Siteworx control panel.
Hindsight’s user agent is below, where X.X.X. represents the current version number of Hindsight’s software:
Nexcess(tm) Site Performance Bot (https://www.nexcess.net) v(X.X.X)
Every line in the transfer logs that corresponds to a hit from Hindsight will display that user agent.
Which response codes generate an alert in Hindsight?
At this time, any error code other than a 200 response will generate a report and send data to our data management system for further review. Our team reviews the data and confirms the response code is indeed a failure, rather than a simple redirect (301, 302 response codes).
What location does Hindsight check my site from?
Hindsight uses four US locations:
Newark, NJ
Atlanta, GA
Dallas, TX
Fremont, CA
Can I add another site or exclude my site from Hindsight monitoring?
Yes. To do so, submit a ticket with your request to our support team by email or through the Client Portal.
For 24-hour assistance any day of the year, contact our support team by email or through your Client Portal.
