tutorial

How to Monitor OpsGenie with Vigilmon

How to monitor OpsGenie with Vigilmon — HTTP health checks on the OpsGenie API, alert routing endpoints, SSL certificate monitoring, and alerting to catch when your incident management platform itself goes down.

OpsGenie is the Atlassian incident management and on-call scheduling platform that deduplicates alerts from Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, and hundreds of other integrations, routes them to the right on-call engineer, and escalates through policies when responders don't acknowledge. When OpsGenie itself goes down, your alerting chain is broken — incidents can fire from your monitoring infrastructure and never reach your on-call team. Vigilmon gives you external uptime monitoring for OpsGenie — API availability, webhook endpoint health, SSL certificate validity, and alerting so you know when your incident management platform is unavailable and your team is flying blind.

What You'll Build

  • An HTTP monitor on the OpsGenie API endpoint to detect when alert ingestion fails
  • A monitor on the OpsGenie Heartbeat API to catch silent monitoring gaps
  • A monitor on the OpsGenie web application for dashboard availability
  • An SSL certificate monitor for your OpsGenie API host
  • Alerting rules that notify your team through a channel independent of OpsGenie when the platform is unreachable

Prerequisites

  • An active OpsGenie account — cloud-hosted at app.opsgenie.com or the Atlassian-unified opsgenie.com
  • A Vigilmon account with at least one notification channel that does not route through OpsGenie (e.g. email, Slack direct)
  • A free account at vigilmon.online

Step 1: Understand OpsGenie's Architecture

OpsGenie exposes a REST API for alert creation, heartbeat monitoring, escalation policies, and integrations. The externally-critical components are:

| Component | Endpoint | Role | |---|---|---| | Alert API | https://api.opsgenie.com/v2/alerts | Receives alerts from monitoring tools and integrations | | Heartbeat API | https://api.opsgenie.com/v2/heartbeats | Receives heartbeat pings; fires alert if pings stop | | OpsGenie web app | https://app.opsgenie.com | Dashboard for on-call schedules, alert management, escalation policies | | EU API | https://api.eu.opsgenie.com/v2/ | EU-region OpsGenie API endpoint |

For teams using the Atlassian-unified experience, the app URL is https://opsgenie.com. Monitoring both the API and the web app catches different failure modes — the API can be degraded while the dashboard appears healthy, and vice versa.

Step 2: Monitor the OpsGenie Alert API Endpoint

The OpsGenie API is the intake point for all alerts from your integrated monitoring tools. An HTTP check confirms the API is reachable and accepting connections:

curl -I https://api.opsgenie.com/v2/alerts
# Returns 401 (unauthorized without API key) — confirms the API is alive
  1. Log in to Vigilmon → Add Monitor → HTTP.
  2. URL: https://api.opsgenie.com/v2/alerts (or https://api.eu.opsgenie.com/v2/alerts for EU region).
  3. Check interval: 60 seconds.
  4. Response timeout: 10 seconds.
  5. Expected status: 401 (unauthenticated request to the API returns 401, confirming it is alive).
  6. Label: OpsGenie Alert API.
  7. Click Save.

This monitor catches:

  • OpsGenie API outages that prevent all integrated tools from creating alerts
  • Network routing failures between your region and OpsGenie's API infrastructure
  • Atlassian platform incidents affecting the OpsGenie API layer
  • DNS resolution failures for api.opsgenie.com

Alert sensitivity: Set to trigger after 1 consecutive failure. A single API outage means every monitoring tool integration stops being able to deliver alerts to your on-call team.

Critical: Configure this monitor's alert channel to use email or Slack directly — NOT OpsGenie. If Vigilmon routes its own alert through OpsGenie and OpsGenie is down, you will not receive the notification.

Step 3: Monitor the OpsGenie Heartbeat API

OpsGenie's Heartbeat feature is designed for exactly this scenario — detecting when a monitoring system stops sending data. You can monitor the Heartbeat API endpoint itself to confirm OpsGenie is processing pings:

curl -I https://api.opsgenie.com/v2/heartbeats
# Returns 401 (unauthorized) — confirms the Heartbeat API is alive
  1. Add Monitor → HTTP.
  2. URL: https://api.opsgenie.com/v2/heartbeats.
  3. Check interval: 2 minutes.
  4. Response timeout: 10 seconds.
  5. Expected status: 401.
  6. Label: OpsGenie Heartbeat API.
  7. Click Save.

Bidirectional heartbeat: In OpsGenie → Settings → Heartbeat Monitoring, create a heartbeat named vigilmon-check. Then configure Vigilmon to POST to https://api.opsgenie.com/v2/heartbeats/vigilmon-check/ping on a schedule. This creates a mutual health check — OpsGenie alerts if Vigilmon stops pinging, and Vigilmon alerts if OpsGenie stops responding.

Step 4: Monitor the OpsGenie Web Application

The OpsGenie dashboard is where on-call engineers acknowledge alerts, update incident timelines, and manage escalation policies. An HTTP check on the web app confirms engineers can access OpsGenie during an incident:

curl -I https://app.opsgenie.com
# Returns 200 with text/html content
  1. Add Monitor → HTTP.
  2. URL: https://app.opsgenie.com (or https://opsgenie.com for Atlassian-unified).
  3. Check interval: 2 minutes.
  4. Response timeout: 15 seconds.
  5. Expected status: 200.
  6. Keyword: OpsGenie (appears in the page title).
  7. Label: OpsGenie web app.
  8. Click Save.

Dashboard vs API independence: OpsGenie's web app and API can fail independently. The API may be degraded (alerts not routing) while the dashboard appears healthy. Monitor both to distinguish between an alert delivery failure and a full platform outage.

Step 5: Monitor SSL Certificates

OpsGenie's TLS certificate secures both the API endpoint (used by monitoring tool integrations) and the web app. An expired certificate causes monitoring tools to fail TLS validation and stop delivering alerts, silently breaking your alerting chain:

openssl s_client -connect api.opsgenie.com:443 2>/dev/null | openssl x509 -noout -dates
  1. Add Monitor → SSL Certificate.
  2. Domain: api.opsgenie.com.
  3. Alert when expiry is within: 30 days.
  4. Alert again: 14 days, 7 days, 3 days, 1 day.
  5. Click Save.

Atlassian-managed certificates: Atlassian manages OpsGenie's SSL certificates. While Atlassian typically renews certificates before expiry, monitoring gives you early warning if a renewal fails, allowing you to contact Atlassian support before your monitoring tool integrations start failing TLS validation.

Step 6: Configure Alerting

In Vigilmon under Settings → Notifications, configure your alert channels:

| Monitor | Trigger | Action | |---|---|---| | OpsGenie Alert API | Non-401/200 or timeout | Check Atlassian status page; notify team via direct email; use backup notification channel | | OpsGenie Heartbeat API | Non-401/200 or timeout | Heartbeat pings may not be processing; verify OpsGenie heartbeat feature separately | | OpsGenie web app | Non-200 or timeout | Engineers cannot access OpsGenie dashboard; escalate via phone or backup channel | | SSL certificate | < 30 days to expiry | Integration tools will start failing TLS validation; contact Atlassian support |

Alert after: 1 consecutive failure for the Alert API monitor. 2 consecutive failures for web app and Heartbeat API monitors.

Important: All OpsGenie monitors must alert via a channel that does NOT route through OpsGenie — use direct email, SMS, or a Slack channel that your on-call team monitors independently.

Common OpsGenie Failure Modes and What Vigilmon Catches

| Scenario | Vigilmon monitor | |---|---| | Atlassian platform incident affecting OpsGenie API | Alert API monitor fires; integrated tools cannot create alerts | | OpsGenie web app deployment failure | Web app monitor fires; engineers cannot acknowledge alerts | | DNS resolution failure for api.opsgenie.com | Alert API monitor fires; all integrations affected | | SSL certificate renewal failure | SSL monitor alerts at 30-day threshold; integrations fail TLS validation | | EU region API degradation | EU API monitor fires if configured; alerts routed to EU region fail | | OpsGenie Heartbeat processing delayed | Heartbeat API monitor fires; heartbeat-based alerts may be late | | Atlassian login/SSO incident | Web app monitor fires; engineers cannot log in to acknowledge alerts | | Rate limiting under alert storm | API returns 429; monitor detects non-standard response | | Network routing change between region and Atlassian | API monitor fires; some regions affected before others | | API key rotation causing integration failures | API may be healthy but authenticated integrations fail; check OpsGenie integration logs |

Independent Alerting Channel — Essential for Monitoring Your Monitor

Vigilmon monitoring OpsGenie is only useful if Vigilmon's alerts for OpsGenie failures reach your team through a path that doesn't go through OpsGenie. Before completing this setup:

  1. Create a dedicated notification channel in Vigilmon (email or Slack) specifically for OpsGenie monitors.
  2. Verify it does not route through OpsGenie — do not use the OpsGenie integration in Vigilmon as the alert destination for these monitors.
  3. Test the channel by temporarily pausing the OpsGenie Alert API monitor and confirming the alert reaches your team directly.

This independence is the entire value of monitoring your incident management platform with an external tool — if both tools use the same delivery path, a single failure breaks both the monitoring and the notification.

OpsGenie coordinates your entire incident response chain, but the platform itself needs external monitoring. When OpsGenie's API goes down, every monitoring tool integration stops delivering alerts — incidents can be firing from Prometheus, Grafana, and Datadog without any on-call engineer receiving a page. Vigilmon checks OpsGenie's API, heartbeat endpoint, web app, and SSL certificate on a 60-second cycle through an independent notification channel, so you know within a minute when your incident management platform stops routing alerts.

Start monitoring OpsGenie in under 5 minutes — register free at vigilmon.online.

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