--- title: Web Application Monitoring – a Basic Framework description: Monitoring is a crucial part of deploying a web application to production. Find out what you need to know about setting up a reliable monitoring solution. canonical_url: https://www.acronis.com/en/blog/posts/web-application-monitoring-basic-framework/ locale: en last_updated: 2026-10-27 --- [Acronis Blog](https://www.acronis.com/en/blog/) # Web Application Monitoring – a Basic Framework When deploying a web application in production, setting up and configuring monitoring is a critical part of the process. As a DevOps, Web developer, or an IT administrator, you need to be alerted when performance issues or incidents occur, and be able to find the root cause of the problem to quickly get it fixed. [Try Now](https://www.acronis.com/en/products/cloud/trial/) [![Image 2: Alexey Sotnikov](https://staticfiles.acronis.com/images/content/445e85b69434e2f883a170995806995d.png)](https://www.acronis.com/en/blog/authors/alexey-sotnikov/ "Alexey Sotnikov") [Alexey Sotnikov](https://www.acronis.com/en/blog/authors/alexey-sotnikov/) 4 min read Last updated 31 October 2016 When deploying a web application in production, setting up and configuring monitoring is a critical part of the process. As a DevOps, Web developer, or an IT administrator, you need to be alerted when performance issues or incidents occur, and be able to find the root cause of the problem to quickly get it fixed. There are numerous methods and levels of web applications monitoring – from simple reachability tests to sophisticated code-level diagnostics of distributed apps. In this article, we’ll cover an approach that is * Quick and easy to implement, * Can be applied to almost any web application technology stack, * Complete and applicable to a vast majority of common problems. ## Three levels of web application monitoring The monitoring framework consists of three levels with multiple types of monitors. 1. External website monitoring 2. Application level monitoring 3. Server (OS) level monitoring When dealing with web applications (especially complex and distributed), the health of the entire system depends on the performance of many individual application components. Any problem in the IT system must be tracked down in order to identify the root cause. For example, a slow response time (website monitoring level) can be caused by database performance problems, which may be the result of a high CPU load. ![Image 3: The three levels of web application monitoring](https://staticfiles.acronis.com/images/content/8ef1a037397041999560dd3ada3cad59.png) The three levels of web application monitoring _The three levels of web application monitoring_. ### External website monitoring External website monitoring, in our case, is a set of metrics that represent how the system performs from an end-user perspective. This set of metrics is collected via an external approach (outside the system) from a few geographical locations. It is a good practice to: * Constantly check your applications **from multiple geographical locations,** * Setup monitoring for **all critical URLs and domains** used by your application. There are four basic monitoring types: * **Reachability monitoring** is the most basic check to ensure the server simply responds to external requests. If server does not respond – it can be counted as an outage. * **Status code monitoring** has the purpose of ensuring the web server responds with a proper HTTP status code (“200” in most cases). * **Response time monitoring** shows how much time it takes for a web server to respond to a client’s request. By creating thresholds, you can always know that the server is not just available, but performs well. * **Full-page load-time monitoring** is not as critical as reachability, but as you probably know, today’s customers have very high expectations on how long it takes for a web page to load – so you need to ensure it’s always below your specified threshold. Also, page load time can differ significantly depending on a region. ### Application level monitoring Application level monitoring uses an agent-based approach to collect and store data from an application stack perspective (application, web server, database). Application level data and notifications can help troubleshoot problems before they impact end users or third-party systems. * **Service uptime monitoring** is a process of checking that the critical services (web server, databases, micro-services, etc.) are running using an agent-based approach (from inside the operating system). * **Web server performance monitoring** – a number solution-specific (e.g. Apache or NGINX) performance metrics. For instance, these are the Apache metrics collected via [Acronis Monitoring Service](http://www.acronis.com/en-au/business/monitoring-service/): Aggregated CPU and memory consumption of all Apache processes Number of busy and idle workers Average number of requests per second Average number of KB served per second Average number of KB per request CPU usage by all workers * **Database performance monitoring** – a number of solution-specific (e.g. MySQL or Cassandra) performance metrics. * **Error logging and monitoring of log files** – the idea is simple: you store information about application-specific errors in log files, and then a monitoring system periodically parses these files and notifies you when a certain condition occurs. ### Server (OS) level monitoring In our framework, this level of monitoring is in charge of collecting data on how the infrastructure resources perform when serving the application. The following metrics are suggested as most critical: * CPU monitoring: **CPU usage** is the percentage of time that the CPU is busy. **CPU load** in the most simplistic definition is a CPU queue length. CPU load works perfectly in conjunction with CPU usage in many cases. For example, your system can perform badly even with CPU usage much less than 100 percent, but CPU load with the number of processes in queue will declare the problem. * RAM monitoring: **Free physical memory** monitoring can help to avoid performance degradation problems related to RAM. * Disk monitoring: **Free disk space** – with a little disk space you are very likely to face performance issues, so it’s better to set thresholds that will alert you when you reach a certain free memory limit (e.g. 20 GB) and increase it as soon as possible. **Disk usage** monitoring can help you identify when the workload of the server becomes too intensive for the current disk I/O capabilities. * Network monitoring: **Traffic, packets, and errors** monitoring across network interfaces allows you to avoid performance bottlenecks, and to know actual and historical network usage statistics. ### Setting up web application monitoring with Acronis Monitoring Service **Acronis Monitoring Service** is a really easy-to-use, yet complete SaaS-based [IT infrastructure monitoring solution](http://www.acronis.com/en-us/business/monitoring-service/), that can handle most of the aspects of web application monitoring, including everything described above (including dependencies modelling). The following table shows how specific monitors of the system correspond to the monitoring types of the framework: **Monitoring type** **Acronis Monitoring Service monitor** Reachability monitoring [Ping monitor](http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/AcronisMonitoringService/index.html#36475.html) Status code monitoring [HTTP monitor](http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/AcronisMonitoringService/index.html#36477.html) (status check option) Response time monitoring [HTTP monitor](http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/AcronisMonitoringService/index.html#36477.html) Full page load time monitoring [Full page load monitor](http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/AcronisMonitoringService/index.html#36491.html) Service uptime monitoring [Windows/Linux service monitor](http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/AcronisMonitoringService/index.html#36506.html) Web server performance monitoring [Apache web server monitor](http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/AcronisMonitoringService/index.html#36500.html) Database performance monitoring [MySQL monitor](http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/AcronisMonitoringService/index.html#36499.html) Error logging and monitoring of log files [Log file monitor](http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/AcronisMonitoringService/index.html#36501.html) CPU monitoring [CPU usage monitor](http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/AcronisMonitoringService/index.html#36485.html) [CPU load monitor](http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/AcronisMonitoringService/index.html#36486.html) RAM monitoring [Free physical memory monitor](http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/AcronisMonitoringService/index.html#36487.html) Disk monitoring [Free disk space monitor](http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/AcronisMonitoringService/index.html#36488.html) [Disk usage monitor](http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/AcronisMonitoringService/index.html#36489.html) Network monitoring [Network interface monitor](http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/AcronisMonitoringService/index.html#36497.html) **Setting up the monitoring framework described in this article, with [Acronis Monitoring Service](http://www.acronis.com/en-us/business/monitoring-service/)****, can take less than an hour.**[Try it yourself for free](http://www.acronis.com/en-us/business/monitoring-service/?trial) and contact Support in case of any questions or issues. [Cybersecurity](https://www.acronis.com/en/blog/tags/cybersecurity/) [Cyber protection](https://www.acronis.com/en/blog/tags/cyber-protection/) ## Written by ![Image 4: Alexey Sotnikov](https://staticfiles.acronis.com/images/content/445e85b69434e2f883a170995806995d.png) Alexey Sotnikov [Previous post](https://www.acronis.com/en/blog/posts/acronis-files-cloud-file-sync-share-youve-been-waiting/) [Acronis Files Cloud — the File Sync & Share You've Been Waiting For](https://www.acronis.com/en/blog/posts/acronis-files-cloud-file-sync-share-youve-been-waiting/) [Next post](https://www.acronis.com/en/blog/posts/how-do-you-create-worlds-fastest-backup/) [How Do You Create the World’s Fastest Backup?](https://www.acronis.com/en/blog/posts/how-do-you-create-worlds-fastest-backup/) About Acronis Acronis is a leader in AI-native cyber protection, unifying data protection, cybersecurity, IT operations and hybrid infrastructure to deliver business continuity, security and compliance with less cost and complexity. More than 21,000 service providers trust Acronis to protect over 750,000 businesses in 150 countries. Acronis is headquartered in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. [Add as a preferred source on Google](https://google.com/preferences/source?q=acronis.com) ## Related stories Want to learn more? Read the latest stories featuring this solution on our blog. 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A veteran cybersecurity CEO, Panjwani previously served as CEO of WatchGuard Technologies and SafeNet. **October 15, 2026**2 min read ![Image 7: Acronis expands MDR toward broader workspace protection](https://staticfiles.acronis.com/images/blog-card/18e90e89f5ec4ef0901f19008d4ccbf2.png) [Acronis expands MDR toward broader workspace protection](https://www.acronis.com/en/blog/posts/acronis-expands-mdr-toward-broader-workspace-protection/) Acronis is expanding the MDR service with capabilities that make this expertise easier to deliver and help partners address more risks. The developments build on a broader commitment to managed security: helping service providers protect the connected workspace while giving customers access to the expertise needed to investigate threats, respond effectively and maintain business continuity. **October 13, 2026**6 min read