--- title: Create monitor description: Learn about create monitor in this guide. image: https://developers.cloudflare.com/cf-twitter-card.png --- > Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://developers.cloudflare.com/learning-paths/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. [Skip to content](#%5Ftop) # Create monitor Instead of starting on your production domain, you likely should create a load balancer on a test or staging domain. This may involve temporary changes to your monitors and pools, depending on your infrastructure setup. Starting with a test domain allows you to verify everything is working correctly before routing production traffic. * [ Dashboard ](#tab-panel-6750) * [ API ](#tab-panel-6751) **Set up the monitor** You can create a monitor within the [load balancer workflow](https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/load-balancers/create-load-balancer/) or in the **Monitors** tab: 1. Go to **Load Balancing**. 2. Select the **Monitors** tab. 3. Select **Create monitor**. 4. Add the following information: * **Type**: The protocol to use for health monitors * _Non-enterprise customers_: Choose **HTTP**, **HTTPS**, or **TCP**. * _Enterprise customers_: Choose **HTTP**, **HTTPS**, **TCP**, **UDP ICMP**, **ICMP Ping**, or **SMTP**. * **Path**: The endpoint path to run health monitor requests against * **Port**: The destination port for health monitors 5. For additional settings, select **Advanced health monitor settings**: * **Interval**: * By increasing the default, you can improve failover time, but you may also increase load on your endpoints. * Minimum time in seconds is 60 (Pro), 15 (Business), and 10 (Enterprise). * **Timeout** and **Retries**: * The health monitor request will return unhealthy if it exceeds the duration specified in **Timeout** (and exceeds this duration more times than the specified number of **Retries**). * **Expected Code(s)**: The expected HTTP response codes listed individually (`200`, `302`) or as a range (for example, entering `2xx` would cover all response codes in the `200` range). * **Response Body**: * Looks for a case-insensitive substring in the response body. * Make sure that the value is relatively static and within the first 10 KB of the HTML page. * **Simulate Zone**: * It is recommended to use the same zone in which the Load Balancer exists. * Changes the egress zone settings of a health monitor request to ensure compatibility with features like [authenticated origin pulls](https://developers.cloudflare.com/ssl/origin-configuration/authenticated-origin-pull/), [Argo Smart Routing](https://developers.cloudflare.com/argo-smart-routing/), and [Dedicated CDN Egress IPs](https://developers.cloudflare.com/smart-shield/configuration/dedicated-egress-ips/). * **Follow Redirects**: * Instead of reporting a `301` or `302` code as unhealthy, the health monitor request follows redirects to the final endpoint. * **Configure Request Header(s)**: * Useful if your endpoints are expecting specific incoming headers. * **Header**: * The HTTP request headers to send in the health monitor. It is recommended that you set a Host header by default. The User-Agent header cannot be overridden. This parameter is only valid for HTTP and HTTPS monitors. 6. Select **Save**. Note To increase confidence in pool status, you can also increase the `consecutive_up` and `consecutive_down` fields when [creating a monitor with the API](https://developers.cloudflare.com/api/resources/load%5Fbalancers/subresources/monitors/methods/create/). To become healthy or unhealthy, monitored endpoints must pass this health monitor request the consecutive number of times specified in these parameters. **Prepare your servers** Make sure that your firewall or web server does not block or rate limit your configured health monitors or requests associated with [Cloudflare IP addresses ↗](https://www.cloudflare.com/ips). Each health monitor has the HTTP user-agent of `"Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Cloudflare-Traffic-Manager/1.0; +https://www.cloudflare.com/traffic-manager/; pool-id: $poolid)"`, where the `$poolid` is the first 16 characters of the [associated pool](https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/pools/). Warning If you know that your endpoint is healthy but Load Balancing is reporting it as unhealthy, refer to our [Monitor troubleshooting guide](https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/troubleshooting/load-balancing-faq/#why-is-my-endpoint-or-pool-considered-unhealthy). **Set up the monitor** For a full list of monitor properties, refer to [Create Monitor](https://developers.cloudflare.com/api/resources/load%5Fbalancers/subresources/monitors/methods/create/). If you need help with API authentication, refer to [Cloudflare API documentation](https://developers.cloudflare.com/fundamentals/api/). Required API token permissions At least one of the following [token permissions](https://developers.cloudflare.com/fundamentals/api/reference/permissions/)is required: * `Load Balancing: Monitors and Pools Write` Create Monitor ``` curl "https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/$ACCOUNT_ID/load_balancers/monitors" \ --request POST \ --header "Authorization: Bearer $CLOUDFLARE_API_TOKEN" \ --json '{ "type": "https", "description": "Login page monitor", "method": "GET", "path": "/health", "header": { "Host": [ "example.com" ], "X-App-ID": [ "abc123" ] }, "port": 8080, "timeout": 3, "retries": 0, "interval": 90, "expected_body": "alive", "expected_codes": "2xx", "follow_redirects": true, "allow_insecure": true, "consecutive_up": 3, "consecutive_down": 2, "probe_zone": "example.com" }' ``` The response contains the complete definition of the new monitor. Response ``` { "success": true, "errors": [], "messages": [], "result": { "id": ":monitor-id", "created_on": "2021-01-01T05:20:00.12345Z", "modified_on": "2021-01-01T05:20:00.12345Z", "type": "https", "description": "Login page monitor", "method": "GET", "path": "/health", "header": { "Host": [ "example.com" ], "X-App-ID": [ "abc123" ] }, "port": 8080, "timeout": 3, "retries": 0, "interval": 90, "expected_body": "alive", "expected_codes": "2xx", "follow_redirects": true, "allow_insecure": true, "consecutive_up": 3, "consecutive_down": 2, "probe_zone": "example.com" } } ``` **Prepare your servers** Make sure that your firewall or web server does not block or rate limit your configured health monitors or requests associated with [Cloudflare IP addresses ↗](https://www.cloudflare.com/ips). Each health monitor has the HTTP user-agent of `"Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Cloudflare-Traffic-Manager/1.0; +https://www.cloudflare.com/traffic-manager/; pool-id: $poolid)"`, where the `$poolid` is the first 16 characters of the [associated pool](https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/pools/). Warning If you know that your endpoint is healthy but Load Balancing is reporting it as unhealthy, refer to our [Monitor troubleshooting guide](https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/troubleshooting/load-balancing-faq/#why-is-my-endpoint-or-pool-considered-unhealthy). Example monitor configuration | Field | Value | | ---------------- | --------- | | Type | HTTP | | Path | / | | Port | 80 | | Interval | 60 | | Method | GET | | Timeout | 5 seconds | | Retries | 2 | | Expected Code(s) | 200 | ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/directory/","name":"Directory"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/learning-paths/","name":"Learning Paths"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"/learning-paths/load-balancing/setup/","name":"Setup"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":4,"item":{"@id":"/learning-paths/load-balancing/setup/create-monitor/","name":"Create monitor"}}]} ```