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Quick and Dirty Web Site Monitoring with PowerShell

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The other day Mark noticed that redirections for our https://www.sysinternals.com/ URL were intermittently failing. In order to get more objective data, I built a script that tested the URL every 5 seconds, and reported back Success or Failure as well as performance (how long it took to completely download base HTML content). I found that PowerShell provided an easy way to use the WebClient .Net object and evaluate the returned HTML content.

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Example 1: Single Site Monitoring

The following example opens a URL every 5 minutes, tests the content, and measures the time it took to download the HTML for the page. Notice that all the HTML is dumped into a big fat string. The string is then searched for specific text that is known to be in the requested page. Note that this script runs forever and can be stopped with a <Ctrl> 'C'.

Example PowerShell script:

$webClient = new-object System.Net.WebClient
$webClient.Headers.Add("user-agent", "PowerShell Script")

while (1 -eq 1) {
$output = ""

$startTime = get-date
$output = $webClient.DownloadString("https://www.sysinternals.com/")
$endTime = get-date

if ($output -like "*Mark Russinovich*") {
"Success`t`t" + $startTime.DateTime + "`t`t" + ($endTime - $startTime).TotalSeconds + " seconds"
} else {
"Fail`t`t" + $startTime.DateTime + "`t`t" + ($endTime - $startTime).TotalSeconds + " seconds"
}

sleep(300)
}

 

Example 2: Monitoring and Alerting for Multiple Web Sites

This script monitors multiple URLs (or web sites), and incorporates e-mail alerting and logging. Unlike the above script, it is designed to be triggered from the Windows Task Scheduler (or some other job scheduler) rather than running forever in a loop. Notice that one of the URLs is actually a zipped file and PowerShell has no problem evaluating it as a string.

Example PowerShell script:

# Collects all named paramters (all others end up in $Args)
param($alert)

# Display Help
if (($Args[0] -eq "-?") -or ($Args[0] -eq "-help")) {
""
"Usage: SysinternalsSiteTest.ps1 -alert <address> -log"
" -alert <address> Send e-mail alerts"
" -log Log results"
""
"Example: SysinternalsSiteTest.ps1 -alert somebody@nospam.com -log"
""
exit
}

# Create the variables
$global:GArgs = $Args

$urlsToTest = @{}
$urlsToTest["Sysinternals Redirect"] = "https://www.sysinternals.com"
$urlsToTest["TechNet Redirect"] = "https://www.microsoft.com/sysinternals"
$urlsToTest["Sysinternals Home"] = "https://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx"
$urlsToTest["Sysinternals Forum"] = "https://forum.sysinternals.com"
$urlsToTest["Sysinternals Blog"] = "https://blogs.technet.com/sysinternals"
$urlsToTest["Sysinternals Downloads"] = "https://download.sysinternals.com/Files/NtfsInfo.zip"

$successCriteria = @{}
$successCriteria["Sysinternals Redirect"] = "*Mark Russinovich*"
$successCriteria["TechNet Redirect"] = "*Mark Russinovich*"
$successCriteria["Sysinternals Home"] = "*Mark Russinovich*"
$successCriteria["Sysinternals Forum"] = "*Sysinternals Utilities*"
$successCriteria["Sysinternals Blog"] = "*Sysinternals Site Discussion*"
$successCriteria["Sysinternals Downloads"] = "*ntfsinfo.exe*"

$userAgent = "PowerShell User"
$webClient = new-object System.Net.WebClient
$webClient.Headers.Add("user-agent", $userAgent)

foreach ($key in $urlsToTest.Keys) {
$output = ""

$startTime = get-date
$output = $webClient.DownloadString($urlsToTest[$key])
$endTime = get-date

if ($output -like $successCriteria[$key]) {
$key + "`t`tSuccess`t`t" + $startTime.DateTime + "`t`t" + ($endTime - $startTime).TotalSeconds + " seconds"

if ($GArgs -eq "-log") {
$key + "`t`tSuccess`t`t" + $startTime.DateTime + "`t`t" + ($endTime - $startTime).TotalSeconds + " seconds" >> WebSiteTest.log
}
} else {
$key + "`t`tFail`t`t" + $startTime.DateTime + "`t`t" + ($endTime - $startTime).TotalSeconds + " seconds"

if ($GArgs -eq "-log") {
$key + "`t`tFail`t`t" + $startTime.DateTime + "`t`t" + ($endTime - $startTime).TotalSeconds + " seconds" >> WebSiteTest.log
}

if ($alert) {
$emailFrom = "computer@nospam.com"
$emailTo = $alert
$subject = "URL Test Failure - " + $startTime
$body = "URL Test Failure: " + $key + " (" + $urlsToTest[$key] + ") at " + $startTime
$smtpServer = "somesmtpserver.nospam.com"
$smtp = new-object Net.Mail.SmtpClient($smtpServer)
$smtp.Send($emailFrom,$emailTo,$subject,$body)
}
}
}

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Several months ago I stumbled upon PowerGadgets and have been finding more and more uses for it ever since. I was initially intrigued by the ability to run powershell scripts but didn't have any ...

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Creating a management dashboard with PowerGadgets and PowerShell

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Otto Helweg has a cool blog entry about how he uses PowerShell to monitor Web Sites HERE . This isn't

  • Anonymous
    October 24, 2007
    How would you modify this script to send credentials if your website is secured?

  • Anonymous
    December 05, 2007
    Hello Otto, Thank you for this cool post.  It recently helped me out with a powershell project I was working on that needed email confirmation.   To help others, I wrote up a post on <a href="http://www.searchmarked.com/windows/how-to-send-an-email-using-a-windows-powershell-script.php> How to send an email using a Windows Powershell script</a> Thanks again for sharing this information! -Harley Stagner <a href="http://www.searchmarked.com>http://www.searchmarked.com</a>

  • Anonymous
    December 22, 2007
    thank you for the post. it  saves me from using of paid services

  • Anonymous
    April 21, 2008
    For me, running script in example 1 returns success and the subsequent results give a fail.  I've just done a straight copy and paste of your code and not changed any URLs. Any idea why?