How to Monitor Websites with Prometheus Blackbox Exporter

Blackbox Exporter lets Prometheus monitor websites and APIs from the outside — detecting issues that internal monitoring would miss.

Install and Configure

wget https://github.com/prometheus/blackbox_exporter/releases/latest/download/blackbox_exporter-*.linux-amd64.tar.gz
tar -xzf blackbox_exporter-*.tar.gz
sudo mv blackbox_exporter-*/blackbox_exporter /usr/local/bin/

Add to Prometheus

- job_name: 'blackbox'
  metrics_path: /probe
  params:
    module: [http_2xx]
  static_configs:
    - targets:
      - https://yourdomain.com
      - https://howto.anytimeserver.support

SSL Expiry Alert

Query: (probe_ssl_earliest_cert_expiry - time()) / 86400
Condition: IS BELOW 30

Conclusion

Blackbox Exporter provides external website monitoring. Our team deploys comprehensive monitoring solutions including external availability checking.