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How to monitor cron jobs?

Pinghome TeamPinghome Team

How to monitor cron jobs, a detailed guide

Cron jobs are what automate repetitive tasks. Whether it is your system backup and maintenance, email notifications, or script automation, cron jobs are indispensable for IT departments for crucial tasks. However, cron jobs must be monitored regularly to ensure they are always running. If there is cron job failure for any reason, the consequences can be severe, especially for cron jobs set for critical tasks involving security backups and finances.  This post contains a step-by-step guide on monitoring cron jobs and getting alerted if any issues occur.

Why Cron Job Monitoring?

Cron monitoring is crucial for the following reasons:

  1. Early Failure detection

    Cron monitoring notifies you the moment a cron job fails, leading to early detection and rectification. It prevents a prolonged damage situation and minimizes the incident outcome especially for critical operations 

  2. Performance tracking and evaluation

    Having a monitoring tool helps you keep track of your cron job performance through its log. With this available, you can easily spot trends, address them and make iterations to your cron job for better functionality 

  3. Compliance and security

    For critical jobs in healthcare or finance, cron job monitoring is even more vital as it is essential for compliance and security. It helps to minimize failures and also keep log of the performance for audits and for proof.

  4. Notifications

    Cron monitoring notifies you of cron job failures via email, SMS, Slack notification or any of your desired channels without you having to check manually. This allows you to take corrective actions and prevent negative compounding impact.

  5. Effectiveness

    Having cron job monitoring in place that alerts you in times of failure prevents manual checking, and the team focuses on other important tasks. It gives the team assurance and peace of mind.

How to Monitor Cron Jobs

There are several ways to monitor cron jobs, such as auditing your cron execution, manual testing, etc. However, heartbeat monitoring is one of the most effective ways. The whole process is automated, and you get alerts the moment there is an issue.  Here is how heartbeat monitoring works:

  • A monitored system such as a cron job sends heartbeats at regular intervals. This can be a simple signal, like an HTTP request or log entry.
  • A monitoring tool such as Pinghome expects the heartbeat within a specified time window.
  • If the heartbeat fails to arrive on time, the system triggers an alert via email, Slack message, webhook, SMS and other integrations based on your choice.

    Pinghome is a comprehensive IT infrastructure monitoring tool that monitors cron jobs using heartbeat monitoring. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to start: 

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After you are logged in, go to the heartbeat tab. Then click on "Add a new job". The page below pops up. Fill in the details required such as the name of the job and set the interval-based ruleset. The heartbeat interval you set is when the monitoring tool, which is Pinghome, will expect a signal from your cron job. If it does not get the signal within that period, it signifies an issue with your cron job and sends you an alert.



You can also create rulesets according to the type of result or message. By creating a ruleset based on the result type, you can tailor actions depending on the outcome of a cron job execution. For instance:

  • If a cron job fails, send an alert email.
  • When a cron job fails, create an incident. Here are examples of result types:



When you configure rulesets based on message type, you trigger actions based on specific words in a message. For example:

  • If a log message contains "timeout", send a high-priority alert.
  • If a message includes "SSL expiration in 3 days", create a reminder notification. Here are examples of result types:


Here are examples of heartbeats when result and message are used: https://api.pinghome.io/v1/heartbeat/f2b3d0f5-5476-4984-ace8-4efff4800b21?result=fail&message=script%20failed%20with%20exit%20code%201
Pinghome alerts you for immediate attention if there is no response within your set time interval. Monitoring helps you ensure all the cron jobs in your crontab file run as scheduled.

Effective Strategies for Cron Job Monitoring Tools

To get the best out of your tool, here are effective strategies to implement:

  1. Choose the right monitoring tool

    The first step in getting the best out of your cron job monitoring is selecting the right one. Crucial factors to watch out for when choosing the right tool are heartbeat monitoring, dashboards and reports for easy tracking, API, and integrations. Before choosing a monitoring tool, ensure all these boxes are ticked. 

  2. Implement Heartbeat Monitoring

    When you select the monitoring tool, set up the monitoring for the cron jobs running and ensure it works.

  3. Set up your alerts

    Once your heartbeat monitoring is all set, determine which communication channel you want to receive alerts from. Most monitoring tools have Slack, SMS, and Gmail options.

  4. Have a centralized dashboard

    A good monitoring tool will have a well-organized dashboard for easy audits. This dashboard allows you to track all your cron jobs.

  5. Regularly evaluate your cron jobs

    Set a timeframe to periodically check the performance of your cron job. It can be weekly, monthly etc. You can assess your cron logs and determine how your cron job can operate better based on your assessments. In addition, clean up your cron jobs regularly and eliminate old and unused ones.

Wrapping Up

With Pinghome's cron job monitoring feature, you can ensure that your cron jobs run smoothly and are immediately alerted if they fail or encounter any issues.  In addition to cron monitoring, Pinghome provides a comprehensive suite of monitoring tools, including server monitoring to track system performance, uptime monitoring to detect website or service downtime, SSL and domain monitoring to help you avoid security risks and expiration issues, and ping monitoring to measure network connectivity and performance. Sign up for Pinghome today to learn how it can help you monitor your cron jobs and keep them always operational.