This application acts as an outpost for running uptime checks in Vigilant.
It is designed to be deployed anywhere in the world to monitor services from different geographic locations.
To set up, it only requires Docker with Compose installed, along with the URL and outpost secret of your Vigilant instance.
When the outpost starts, it will register itself with the Vigilant instance. It will select a random port number for Vigilant to connect to.
The outpost will then start listening for incoming requests from Vigilant. When a request is received, it will perform the uptime check and return the result back to Vigilant.
These outposts are designed to be short-lived and can be destroyed and recreated at any time. When an outpost is destroyed, it will automatically unregister itself from Vigilant.
The outpost includes an auto-restart mechanism for resource efficiency. If no check requests are received for a configurable period (default: 60 minutes), the outpost will automatically shut down. Docker's restart policy (configured as unless-stopped in docker-compose.yml) will then start a new container, ensuring the service remains available when Vigilant does not send requests anymore.
You can configure the inactivity timeout by setting the INACTIVITY_TIMEOUT_MINS environment variable in your .env file.
All communication between the outpost and Vigilant is done over HTTPS. Vigilant maintains a root CA certificate that is used to sign the outpost certificates.
When the outpost registers itself with Vigilant, it will receive a signed certificate that it will use for all future communication.
The /run-check endpoint accepts either a single check object or an array of checks. All check types (http, tcp, and icmp) accept an optional timeout field (in seconds) that limits how long the individual check may run before it is canceled. When the field is omitted, the check automatically uses the default timeout of 5 seconds.
Example single check payload:
{
"type": "http",
"target": "https://example.com",
"timeout": 10
}
The outpost is configured using environment variables. Create a .env file in the root directory with the following variables:
VIGILANT_URL(required): The URL of your Vigilant instanceOUTPOST_SECRET(required): The secret key used to authenticate with VigilantINACTIVITY_TIMEOUT_MINS(optional): Number of minutes of inactivity before auto-restart (default: 60)PORT(optional): The port the outpost will listen on (default: randomly assigned between 1000-10000)IP(optional): The public IP address of the outpost (default: auto-detected)COUNTRY(optional): The country associated with this outpostLATITUDE(optional): The latitude coordinate for this outpostLONGITUDE(optional): The longitude coordinate for this outpost
See .env.example for a sample configuration file.
Please refer to Vigilant's documentation for detailed deployment instructions: Vigilant Deployment Guide.
This repository is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.