What are Real Server Monitors?

A real-server monitor, also known as a server health check monitor in an Application Delivery Controller (ADC), is a feature provided to continuously assess the availability and performance of backend servers within a network. This monitoring system performs periodic health checks by sending various types of probes—such as HTTP requests, ICMP pings, or TCP connections. It is also capable of logging into applications to they are operational and can handle client requests effectively. If a server fails to respond correctly or within the expected time frame, the monitor flags it as unhealthy and can trigger automatic failover mechanisms to route traffic away from the affected server to maintain seamless service delivery and minimize downtime.

The EdgeADC has a variety of pre-built health check monitors, and the capability for you to configure custom ones using the GUI. In addition to this you can also write specific custom ones using PERL and upload them to the EdgeADC.