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title kind description aliases further_reading
ICMP Tests
documentation
Monitor availability of your hosts and diagnose network issues
/synthetics/icmp_test
/synthetics/icmp_check
link tag text
Blog
Introducing Datadog Synthetic Monitoring
link tag text
/getting_started/synthetics/api_test
Documentation
Get started with API tests
link tag text
/synthetics/private_locations
Documentation
Run ICMP pings on internal endpoints

Overview

ICMP tests allow you to easily monitor the availability of your hosts and diagnose network communication issues. By asserting on the values received from one or more ICMP pings to your endpoint, Datadog can help detect connectivity issues, above-quota latency for round trip times, and unexpected changes in security firewall configuration. The tests can also track the number of network hops (TTL) required to connect to your host and view traceroute results to discover details on each network hop along the path.

ICMP tests can run from both managed and private locations depending on whether you want to trigger ICMP pings to your endpoints from outside or inside your network. You can run ICMP tests on a defined schedule, on demand, or from within your CI/CD pipelines.

Configuration

After choosing to create an ICMP test, define your test's request.

Define request

  1. Specify the Domain Name or IP address to run your test on.
  2. Select or deselect Track number of network hops (TTL). When selected, this option turns on a "traceroute" probe to discover all gateways along the path to the host destination.
  3. Select the Number of Pings to trigger per test session. By default, the number of pings is set to four. You can choose to decrease this number or increase it up to ten.
  4. Name your ICMP test.
  5. Add env Tags as well as any other tags to your ICMP test. You can then use these tags to quickly filter through your Synthetic tests on the Synthetic Monitoring homepage.

{{< img src="synthetics/api_tests/icmp_test_config.png" alt="Define ICMP request" style="width:90%;" >}}

Click Test URL to try out the request configuration. A response preview is displayed on the right side of your screen.

Define assertions

Assertions define what an expected test result is. When hitting Test URL, basic assertions on latency, packet loss, and packet received are added. You must define at least one assertion for your test to monitor.

Type Aggregation Operator Value Type
latency avg, max, min or stddev (aka jitter) is less than, is less than or equal,
is, is more than, is more than or equal		 integer (ms)
packet loss - is less than, is less than or equal, is, is more than, is more than or equal percentage (%)
packet received - is less than, is less than or equal, is, is more than, is more than or equal integer
network hops - is less than, is less than or equal, is, is more than, is more than or equal integer

You can create up to 20 assertions per API test by selecting New Assertion or by selecting the response preview directly:

{{< img src="synthetics/api_tests/icmp_assertion.png" alt="Define assertions for your ICMP test" style="width:90%;" >}}

Select locations

Select the Locations to run your ICMP test from. ICMP tests can run from both managed and private locations depending on whether you want to trigger the ICMP pings from outside or inside your network.

Specify test frequency

ICMP tests can run:

  • On a schedule to ensure your most important services are always accessible to your users. Select the frequency at which you want Datadog to run your ICMP test.
  • Within your CI/CD pipelines.
  • On-demand to run your tests whenever makes the most sense for your team.

Define alert conditions

You can set alert conditions to determine the circumstances under which a test should fail and trigger an alert.

Alerting rule

When you set the alert conditions to: An alert is triggered if any assertion fails for X minutes from any n of N locations, an alert is triggered only if these two conditions are true:

  • At least one location was in failure (at least one assertion failed) during the last X minutes.
  • At one moment during the last X minutes, at least n locations were in failure.

Fast retry

Your test can trigger retries X times after Y ms in case of a failed test result. Customize the retry interval to suit your alerting sensibility.

Location uptime is computed on a per-evaluation basis (whether the last test result before evaluation was up or down). The total uptime is computed based on the configured alert conditions. Notifications sent are based on the total uptime.

Notify your team

Your test sends a notification based on the alerting conditions previously defined. Use this section to define what messages to send to your teams and how to send them.

  1. Similar to how you configure monitors, select users and/or services that should receive notifications either by adding a @notification to the message or by searching for team members and connected integrations with the drop-down box.

  2. Enter the notification message for your test. This field allows standard Markdown formatting and supports the following conditional variables:

    Conditional Variable Description
    {{#is_alert}} Show when the test alerts.
    {{^is_alert}} Show unless the test alerts.
    {{#is_recovery}} Show when the test recovers from alert.
    {{^is_recovery}} Show unless the test recovers from alert.

  3. Specify how often you want your test to resend the notification message in the case of test failure. To prevent renotifications from failing tests, leave the option as Never renotify if the monitor has not been resolved.

Click Save to save your test and have Datadog start executing it.

Variables

Create local variables

You can create local variables by clicking on Create Local Variable at the top right hand corner of your test configuration form. You can define their values from one of the below available builtins:

{{ numeric(n) }} : Generates a numeric string with n digits.

{{ alphabetic(n) }} : Generates an alphabetic string with n letters.

{{ alphanumeric(n) }} : Generates an alphanumeric string with n characters.

{{ date(n, format) }} : Generates a date in one of Datadog's accepted formats with the value of the date the test is initiated + n days.

{{ timestamp(n, unit) }} : Generates a timestamp in one of Datadog's accepted units with a value of the timestamp the test is initiated at +/- n chosen units.

Use variables

You can use the global variables defined in the Settings and the locally defined variables in the URL and assertions of your ICMP tests.

To display your list of variables, type {{ in your desired field:

{{< img src="synthetics/api_tests/use_variable.mp4" alt="Using Variables in API tests" video="true" width="90%" >}}

Test failure

A test is considered FAILED if it does not satisfy one or more assertions or if the request prematurely failed. In some cases, the test can fail without testing the assertions against the endpoint.

These reasons include the following:

DNS : DNS entry not found for the test URL. Possible causes include misconfigured test URL or the wrong configuration of your DNS entries.

Permissions

By default, only users with the Datadog Admin and Datadog Standard roles can create, edit, and delete Synthetic ICMP tests. To get create, edit, and delete access to Synthetic ICMP tests, upgrade your user to one of those two default roles.

If you have access to the custom role feature, add your user to any custom role that includes synthetics_read and synthetics_write permissions.

Further Reading

{{< partial name="whats-next/whats-next.html" >}}