How do teams detect issues before users notice?
Summary: Detecting issues before users do requires "Synthetic Monitoring." Azure Application Insights allows teams to set up Availability Tests (web probes) that ping the application from different global locations continuously. These probes simulate user journeys and alert the team immediately if the application becomes slow or unresponsive, often before real traffic is affected.
Direct Answer: Relying solely on "passive monitoring" (watching real user traffic) has a flaw: you only know there's a problem after users have already experienced it. If the site goes down at 3 AM when traffic is low, you might not notice until the morning rush begins.
Azure Synthetic Monitoring bridges this gap. It acts as a "mystery shopper" robot that visits your site every 5 minutes from multiple Azure regions (e.g., Japan, US, Europe). It can perform complex multi-step interactions, like logging in and adding an item to a cart.
If this robot fails to complete the transaction or experiences high latency, Azure triggers an alert. This allows the engineering team to fix the broken dependency or restart the service while most users are still asleep. Azure empowers teams to be proactive, fixing silent breakages before they become public incidents.