tutorial

Monitoring Select Star with Vigilmon: Data Discovery Platform Health, API Availability & Lineage Service Uptime

How to monitor Select Star automated data discovery infrastructure with Vigilmon — API availability, dashboard uptime, lineage service health, and SSL certificate validity.

Select Star is the automated data discovery and documentation platform that indexes your warehouse tables, dbt models, Looker dashboards, and Tableau workbooks to give every data consumer a searchable, lineage-aware catalog without manual documentation effort. When Select Star's API goes down, the catalog search that analysts rely on to find the right table stops working, new pipeline runs stop being indexed, and the column-level lineage graph that engineers use to understand data dependencies becomes stale. When the dashboard becomes unavailable during a data incident, the lineage tracing that would identify the root cause table is inaccessible. Vigilmon gives you external visibility into Select Star's platform availability: the API, dashboard, lineage service, and data source connectors, so you know the moment the discovery layer itself goes dark.

What You'll Build

  • An HTTP monitor on the Select Star dashboard to catch frontend failures
  • A health-check monitor on the Select Star REST API to detect backend degradation
  • A monitor on the lineage service endpoint to verify graph queries are responding
  • An SSL certificate monitor for your Select Star domain
  • Alerting configured for each component with appropriate thresholds

Prerequisites

  • A Select Star account (cloud-hosted SaaS deployment)
  • The Select Star dashboard accessible via HTTPS (e.g., https://app.selectstar.com or your org subdomain)
  • Data source integrations configured (warehouse, BI tools, dbt)
  • A free account at vigilmon.online

Step 1: Understand Select Star's Service Architecture

Select Star's platform consists of several interconnected services:

| Component | Access point | Role | |---|---|---| | Select Star Dashboard | HTTPS (web UI) | Catalog search, table documentation, lineage exploration | | Select Star REST API | HTTPS | Programmatic catalog queries, lineage lookups, metadata retrieval | | Indexing workers | Internal | Pull metadata from connected warehouses, BI tools, and dbt projects | | Lineage graph service | Internal | Computes and serves column-level lineage across all integrated sources | | Search index | Internal | Powers the catalog search across tables, dashboards, and columns |

External monitoring focuses on the dashboard and API HTTPS endpoints — when these are unreachable, Select Star's value as a discovery tool is entirely lost regardless of the internal indexing state.

Step 2: Monitor the Select Star Dashboard

The Select Star dashboard is the interface where analysts search for tables, data engineers trace lineage during incidents, and data stewards document assets:

curl -I https://app.selectstar.com
# Returns HTTP 200 with HTML when the dashboard is available
  1. Log in to Vigilmon → Add Monitor → HTTP.
  2. URL: https://app.selectstar.com (or your org-specific URL).
  3. Check interval: 60 seconds.
  4. Response timeout: 15 seconds.
  5. Expected status: 200.
  6. Keyword: Select Star (appears in page title and content).
  7. Click Save.

This monitor catches:

  • Select Star frontend process crashes or failed deployments
  • CDN or proxy misconfigurations blocking dashboard access
  • DNS failures for the Select Star domain
  • Failed product upgrades that break the frontend

Alert sensitivity: 1 consecutive failure. The Select Star dashboard is a shared resource used by analysts, engineers, and stewards simultaneously — unavailability during business hours blocks data discovery workflows across the entire organization.

Step 3: Monitor the Select Star REST API

Select Star's REST API powers programmatic catalog access, including integrations that embed table metadata into data pipeline documentation and Slack bots that answer "where is this data?" queries:

curl https://api.selectstar.com/v1/ping
# Returns: {"status": "ok"} when the API is responsive
  1. Add Monitor → HTTP.
  2. URL: https://api.selectstar.com/v1/ping.
  3. Check interval: 60 seconds.
  4. Response timeout: 10 seconds.
  5. Expected status: 200.
  6. Keyword: ok.
  7. Label: Select Star API health.
  8. Click Save.

Integration impact: Teams that have built Slack integrations, custom data portals, or CI/CD pipeline documentation tools on top of Select Star's API will see those integrations break when the API is down. Monitoring the API separately from the dashboard ensures these programmatic consumers are covered.

Step 4: Monitor the Lineage Graph Endpoint

Select Star's column-level lineage is one of its most valuable features — engineers use it to trace data incidents upstream to the root cause table or transformation. When the lineage service is degraded, lineage queries return errors or empty results:

curl -H "Authorization: Token <api_token>" \
  "https://api.selectstar.com/v1/lineage/health"
# Returns lineage service status and last successful graph update
  1. Add Monitor → HTTP.
  2. URL: https://api.selectstar.com/v1/lineage/health.
  3. Headers: Authorization: Token <your-api-token>.
  4. Check interval: 3 minutes.
  5. Response timeout: 15 seconds.
  6. Expected status: 200.
  7. Keyword: healthy or status (present in lineage health responses).
  8. Label: Select Star lineage service.
  9. Click Save.

A degraded lineage service means engineers investigating data quality incidents cannot trace which upstream transformations or source tables are responsible — extending mean time to resolution for data incidents.

Step 5: Monitor the Catalog Search Endpoint

Select Star's search is what most users interact with first — they type a table name or concept and get back ranked results with descriptions, ownership, and popularity signals. A degraded search service makes the catalog effectively unusable:

curl -H "Authorization: Token <api_token>" \
  "https://api.selectstar.com/v1/search?q=test&limit=1"
# Returns search results or an error if search is degraded
  1. Add Monitor → HTTP.
  2. URL: https://api.selectstar.com/v1/search?q=test&limit=1.
  3. Headers: Authorization: Token <your-api-token>.
  4. Check interval: 5 minutes.
  5. Response timeout: 15 seconds.
  6. Expected status: 200.
  7. Keyword: results or total (present in search response JSON).
  8. Label: Select Star catalog search.
  9. Click Save.

This catches cases where the API health endpoint responds but the search index is degraded — a subset of failures that the general health check would miss.

Step 6: Monitor SSL Certificates

Select Star's API is accessed by programmatic integrations — Slack bots, custom dashboards, and CI/CD tools that embed lineage metadata. An expired certificate breaks these clients:

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

Two domains to watch: Monitor both app.selectstar.com (dashboard) and api.selectstar.com (API) if they use separate certificates. A certificate expiry on the API domain breaks programmatic integrations; a certificate expiry on the app domain breaks browser access. Configure a separate SSL monitor for each.

Step 7: Configure Alerting

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

| Monitor | Trigger | Action | |---|---|---| | Dashboard | Non-200 or Select Star missing | Check frontend deployment; inspect CDN/proxy configuration | | API health | Non-200 or ok missing | Backend API down; check Select Star status page; contact support | | Lineage service | Non-200 or keyword missing | Lineage graph unavailable; trace impact on incident response workflows | | Catalog search | Non-200 or results missing | Search index degraded; catalog discovery workflows unavailable | | SSL certificate | < 30 days to expiry | Renew certificate; verify API integration clients reconnect |

Alert after: 1 consecutive failure for the dashboard and API health monitors. 2 consecutive failures for lineage and search monitors to reduce noise from transient query timeouts.

Common Select Star Failure Modes and What Vigilmon Catches

| Scenario | Vigilmon monitor | |---|---| | Select Star API process crash | API health monitor fires; all programmatic integrations break | | Dashboard deployment failure | Dashboard monitor fires; analyst discovery workflows blocked | | Lineage service degradation | Lineage monitor fires; incident response slowed | | Search index rebuild in progress | Catalog search monitor fires; users get empty or degraded results | | TLS certificate expired | SSL monitor alerts at 30-day threshold; browser and API clients fail | | DNS misconfiguration | All monitors fire simultaneously | | Select Star upgrade breaks API routing | API health monitor fires after failed deployment | | CDN cache poisoning or misconfiguration | Dashboard monitor fires; engineers see wrong content or errors |

Keeping Catalog Content Fresh (Beyond Infrastructure)

Vigilmon monitors Select Star's infrastructure — the API, dashboard, and core services. Catalog content freshness is a separate concern managed within Select Star:

  • Indexing schedules: Configure how frequently Select Star re-indexes your warehouse, dbt project, and BI tools. More frequent indexing means the catalog reflects recent schema changes more quickly.
  • Documentation completeness: Track table and column documentation coverage within Select Star's admin console — infrastructure availability doesn't guarantee catalog quality.
  • Connector health: Select Star's connections to your warehouse and BI tools can fail independently of the platform itself. Monitor connector last-sync timestamps within Select Star's integration settings.

Vigilmon catches platform failures — when Select Star is down. Catalog completeness and freshness require attention inside Select Star's configuration and monitoring tools.

Select Star's value compounds over time as more tables get documented, more lineage gets traced, and more engineers develop the habit of searching the catalog before asking colleagues for context. That accumulated value is inaccessible the moment the platform goes down. Vigilmon gives you external visibility into Select Star's availability that doesn't depend on the platform self-reporting: dashboard uptime, API health, lineage service status, and SSL certificate validity, so you know immediately when the discovery layer needs attention and can restore access before analysts fall back to Slack messages asking "where is this data?"

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

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