Web Service Monitoring Agent

Prevent API downtime and certificate expiration before they disrupt business operations. Nodinite Web Service Monitoring Agent empowers operations teams to monitor REST/SOAP endpoints, track SSL certificate health, measure response times, and resolve issues instantly—without RDP access or manual Postman/SOAP UI testing.

Why Teams Choose This Agent

Modern businesses depend on hundreds of REST APIs, SOAP web services, and HTTP endpoints—connecting cloud applications, partner integrations, payment gateways, shipping providers, and internal microservices. Traditional monitoring with manual Postman collections, scattered SOAP UI projects, and spreadsheet certificate tracking creates operational nightmares that cost availability, security, and customer trust:

• 🚫 Manual API Testing Doesn't Scale – Teams maintain 200+ Postman collections across dev/test/prod environments, manually running tests when time permits—production endpoint failures discovered by customers, not monitoring
• 🕵️‍♂️ Certificate Expiration Surprises – SSL certificates expire at midnight causing payment API failures, shipping integrations to break, partner B2B connections to drop—discovery at 8 AM when business opens, revenue already lost
• 🔒 Fragmented Monitoring Tools – Operations checks Azure Application Insights for Logic Apps endpoints, AWS CloudWatch for Lambda APIs, New Relic for .NET services, Postman for partner APIs—no unified view, alerts scattered across 5 platforms
• 🧠 Response Time Blindness – API returns HTTP 200 but takes 15 seconds instead of 2 seconds—customers experience "slow checkout", SLA violated, no proactive alert until complaints arrive
• 🔗 Authentication Sprawl – 50 endpoints using Basic Auth, OAuth2, API Keys, Client Certificates, NTLM, custom headers—Postman collections out of sync with production credentials, tests fail for wrong reasons
• 📝 No Historical Performance Data – When CEO asks "Has our payment API been reliable this quarter?" teams manually export Application Insights logs, correlate timestamps, build Excel charts—takes 8 hours

Nodinite Web Service Monitoring Agent eliminates these challenges by providing automated endpoint testing, proactive certificate monitoring, and performance tracking across all your REST/SOAP/HTTP services—with unified alerting and delegation:

✅ Automate API testing like Postman/SOAP UI but with alerting—schedule tests every 1-60 minutes, validate responses, track SLA compliance across all environments
✅ Never miss certificate expiration again—monitor SSL/TLS certificates 30-90 days before expiry, detect revoked certificates, alert on weak cipher suites
✅ Monitor unlimited REST/SOAP/HTTP endpoints with one license—internal APIs, partner integrations, cloud services, on-premise web services consolidated in single dashboard
✅ Track response times with custom thresholds—alert when API response >5 seconds, visualize performance trends, identify degradation before SLA breach
✅ Support all authentication schemes—Basic Auth, Bearer tokens, OAuth2, API Keys, Client Certificates, NTLM, custom headers configured per endpoint
✅ Delegate API monitoring without infrastructure access—business teams view endpoint status, retry failed requests, download responses—no Postman, no server credentials
✅ Zero changes to existing services—agent polls endpoints externally, no instrumentation, no code changes, works with any REST/SOAP/HTTP service

How It Works

The Web Service Monitoring Agent polls REST/SOAP/HTTP endpoints on schedule (1-60 minute intervals), validates responses, tracks SSL certificates, measures performance metrics—providing unified monitoring across all environments.

Tip

Think Postman/SOAP UI/Insomnia—but automated with alerting. Configure endpoint tests once (URL, method, headers, authentication, expected response), schedule execution, receive alerts on failures or performance degradation. No manual testing required.

Important

Security Note: If you use Postman for API testing, review Security Risks of Postman. Nodinite stores credentials encrypted, supports role-based access, and provides complete audit trails—enterprise-grade security by default.

What You Can Do

📊 Automate API Testing Like Postman—But with Alerting

• Replace manual Postman/SOAP UI testing—configure endpoint tests once (URL, HTTP method, headers, body, expected response), schedule every 1-60 minutes
• Validate response content automatically—check HTTP status codes, response body patterns (regex), JSON/XML structure, specific field values
• Support all HTTP methods—GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, PATCH for REST APIs; SOAP 1.1/1.2 with WSDL validation
• Test across all environments—dev, test, UAT, prod endpoints monitored from single agent instance with environment-specific configurations

Example: E-commerce company has 120 REST APIs (product catalog, shopping cart, payment, shipping, inventory). Previously: QA manually ran Postman collections daily, production failures discovered by customers. Now: Nodinite tests all endpoints every 5 minutes—alert when Payment API returns HTTP 500, Shopping Cart response time >3 seconds, Inventory API missing "stockLevel" field. Production incidents down 80%.

🔐 Prevent Certificate Expiration Disasters

• Monitor SSL/TLS certificates automatically—track expiration dates 30/60/90 days before expiry with escalating alerts
• Detect certificate issues proactively—expired certificates, revoked certificates, self-signed certificates, weak cipher suites (TLS 1.0/1.1)
• Track certificate chains—root CA, intermediate certificates, leaf certificates—alert when any certificate in chain expires
• Monitor partner/vendor certificates—payment gateway SSL, shipping API certificates, B2B partner endpoints—get notified before they expire and break integrations

Example: Payment processor API uses SSL certificate renewed annually. Previous year: Certificate expired Friday 11 PM, payment processing failed Saturday morning ($250K lost revenue), emergency cert renewal took 8 hours. This year: Nodinite alerted 45 days before expiration, 30-day alert, 7-day escalation—certificate renewed proactively with zero downtime.

⏱️ Track Response Times Before SLA Breach

• Measure endpoint performance continuously—response time, request duration, time-to-first-byte tracked on every test execution
• Set custom thresholds per endpoint—critical payment API <2 seconds, reporting API <10 seconds, batch export API <60 seconds
• Detect performance degradation trends—API response times increasing from 1.5s → 2.5s → 4s over 3 days indicates capacity issue before SLA breach
• Correlate performance with business impact—"Checkout API slow" correlates with "Shopping cart abandonment rate +15%"

Example: Shipping rate calculation API SLA: 95% of requests <3 seconds. Nodinite tracks response times: Monday 1.8s average, Tuesday 2.1s, Wednesday 2.7s, Thursday 3.1s (threshold warning), Friday 4.5s (SLA breach alert). Operations investigated before customer complaints—discovered database index missing after deployment. Fix applied, response times returned to 1.8s.

🌐 Consolidate Multi-Environment Endpoint Monitoring

• Monitor across all environments from single agent—dev, test, UAT, staging, prod endpoints with environment-specific authentication
• Track same API across multiple regions—Azure East US endpoint, Azure West Europe endpoint, AWS us-east-1, on-premise data center
• Support hybrid and multi-cloud—Azure App Services, AWS Lambda functions, on-premise IIS, third-party SaaS APIs unified monitoring
• Compare environment performance—"Why is prod API slower than test?" visualized in Nodinite metrics

Example: Global manufacturer: 80 REST APIs deployed to 5 environments (dev/test/uat/staging/prod) across 3 regions (US/EU/APAC) = 1,200 endpoint+environment combinations. Previously: separate monitoring per environment, no cross-region comparison. Now: Single Nodinite dashboard shows all endpoints—detects when EU prod API 40% slower than US prod (database replication lag identified and fixed).

🔑 Support Every Authentication Scheme

• Basic Authentication—username/password for legacy APIs
• Bearer Tokens—OAuth2 access tokens, JWT tokens with automatic refresh
• API Keys—query string, header, or cookie-based authentication
• Client Certificates—mutual TLS (mTLS) for B2B integrations
• NTLM/Windows Authentication—on-premise IIS services, intranet APIs
• Custom Headers—vendor-specific authentication schemes (X-API-Key, X-Auth-Token)

Example: Insurance company integrates with 40 partner APIs using 6 different auth schemes: 15 use Basic Auth, 10 use OAuth2 bearer tokens, 8 use API keys, 5 use client certificates, 2 use NTLM. Nodinite agent configured once per endpoint type—all authentication handled automatically, tokens refreshed, certificates rotated, credentials encrypted at rest.

📈 Gain Operational Insights with Historical Data

• Visualize endpoint uptime trends—99.95% uptime this month vs 99.2% last month, identify improvement or degradation
• Track SLA compliance—"Payment API met <2s response time SLA 98.5% of the time" for executive reporting
• Export metrics to Power BI—via Web API for executive dashboards, capacity planning, vendor SLA verification
• Analyze failure patterns—"Shipping API fails every Monday 3 AM" correlates with vendor maintenance window (adjust alerting schedule)

Example: CFO asks "Are our APIs reliable enough to support 2x revenue growth?" Operations exports Nodinite metrics to Power BI: Current 1M API calls/month, 99.7% success rate, peak response time 2.3s. Analysis shows current infrastructure supports 3.5M calls/month before capacity expansion needed. Data-driven decision: defer infrastructure investment 18 months, saving $120K.

👥 Delegate Endpoint Monitoring Without Infrastructure Access

• Grant business teams API visibility—view endpoint status, recent test results, response time trends without Postman or server access
• Role-based permissions—operations can retry failed tests, support team downloads responses for analysis, business analysts view status dashboards only
• Audit all actions—Log Audits track who tested which endpoint, when, and results—compliance without Azure/AWS console access
• Filter by application or business domain—create Monitor Views showing only approved APIs to each team

Example: Customer support team needs to verify "Is our API down?" without escalating to DevOps. Nodinite Roles configured: "Support API Viewers" role can see endpoint status, recent failures, retry tests—no infrastructure credentials. Support resolves 60% of "API down" complaints independently (answer: "Your firewall blocking our IP")—DevOps escalations reduced by 50%.

Complete Feature Reference

Note

One License, Unlimited Endpoints: Monitor all your REST/SOAP/HTTP endpoints with a single Nodinite license—no per-endpoint, per-environment, or per-region fees.

Related Monitoring Solutions

Nodinite provides comprehensive infrastructure and application monitoring:

• Windows Server Monitoring Agent – Monitor IIS web applications, application pools, Windows Services hosting APIs
• Azure Monitoring Agent – Monitor Azure App Services, Function Apps, API Management, Logic Apps
• Database Monitoring Agent – Monitor databases supporting your APIs (SQL Server, Azure SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL)

Get Started

Common Questions

Does this agent support both REST and SOAP endpoints?

Yes—REST APIs (all HTTP methods: GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, PATCH), SOAP 1.1/1.2 (with WSDL validation), and plain HTTP/HTTPS endpoints (websites, web applications, health checks).

How does certificate monitoring work?

The agent tracks SSL/TLS certificates for your endpoints—expiration dates (alert 30/60/90 days before expiry), certificate chains (root CA, intermediate, leaf), revocation status, and weak cipher suites (TLS 1.0/1.1). Also monitors client certificates used for authentication.

What authentication schemes are supported?

All common schemes: Basic Authentication (username/password), Bearer Tokens (OAuth2, JWT with automatic refresh), API Keys (query string/header/cookie), Client Certificates (mTLS for B2B integrations), NTLM/Windows Authentication (on-premise IIS), and Custom Headers (vendor-specific X-API-Key, X-Auth-Token).

Can I set different response time thresholds per endpoint?

Yes—configure custom thresholds per endpoint: critical payment API <2 seconds, reporting API <10 seconds, batch export API <60 seconds. Nodinite alerts when any endpoint exceeds its specific threshold.

How do I monitor the same API across dev/test/prod environments?

Configure the same endpoint type with environment-specific URLs and authentication—dev.api.example.com, test.api.example.com, prod.api.example.com. Single agent instance monitors all environments, compare performance across environments in Nodinite dashboard.

Does this integrate with Azure/AWS API monitoring?

Yes—this agent complements cloud-native monitoring: Azure App Services monitored by Azure Monitoring Agent, on-premise IIS monitored by Windows Server Monitoring Agent, backend databases monitored by Database Monitoring Agent. All unified in Nodinite.

Who can view and manage endpoints?

Controlled via Roles: Operations Admin role can add/edit/delete endpoints and retry tests; Operations Viewer role can view status and recent test results only; Business User role can see filtered endpoints via Monitor Views (e.g., "Show only Invoicing APIs"). All actions tracked in Log Audits.

How does this compare to running Postman collections?

Nodinite advantages: Automated scheduling (every 1-60 minutes), alerting when endpoints fail (Postman requires manual review), historical performance tracking (Postman shows single test result), role-based access (Postman requires sharing credentials), audit trails (compliance), enterprise security (encrypted credentials). Think "Postman with production monitoring."

Does monitoring endpoint availability impact performance?

Minimal impact: Agent runs as Windows Service, configurable test intervals (default 5 minutes), timeout settings prevent long-running tests, connection pooling for efficiency. Typical resource usage: <100 MB RAM, <5% CPU during tests.

Can I validate response content, not just HTTP status codes?

Yes—response validation options: HTTP status codes (200, 201, 404, 500), response body patterns (regex matching), JSON/XML structure (specific field presence), specific field values ("status": "success"). Example: Alert if Payment API returns HTTP 200 but response contains "error": true.

How are failed endpoint tests reported?

Multiple channels: Real-time alerts via email/SMS/Slack/Teams/PagerDuty (configurable per endpoint), Dashboard widgets showing current failures, Historical logs for pattern analysis, Power BI reports via Web API for executive summaries. Escalation rules available (alert support team first, escalate to DevOps after 15 minutes if unresolved).

What happens if the agent server loses network connectivity?

Agent buffers test results during outages, resyncs when connectivity restored, alerts if agent offline >X minutes (configurable). High availability: Deploy agents in clustered configuration—multiple agent servers test same endpoints, automatic failover if primary agent fails.

Additional Resources

Getting Started
Prerequisites for Web Service Monitoring Agent
Install Web Service Monitoring Agent
Configuration

Features
Monitoring Web Services
Monitoring Certificates
Managing Web Services

Support
Troubleshooting
Release Notes

Next Step

Ready to automate your API monitoring? Start with the Installation Guide or Configure Your First Endpoint.

Install Web Service Monitoring Agent
Configuration
Monitor Views