Everything goes down right after takeoff
You settle into your seat. Your laptop goes under the seat in front of you. Then your phone lights up: a service connection has failed.
Of course. It waited until you boarded.
Project Zero’s service alerts help you catch that moment by monitoring whether a particular computer can still reach the service it needs through its Project Zero connection.
Can this computer reach that service?
A server can be running while a client has trouble connecting to it. Your database might be available to one application server while another can no longer reach it.
That distinction matters when you’re investigating an outage. “The server is up” doesn’t answer whether the computer doing the work can actually use it.
Project Zero pairs each service alert with a specific computer and service. The desktop app checks the connection through that computer’s own tunnel and reports what it finds every minute. That gives you a view of access from the place where the connection matters.
For example, you can watch whether an application server can reach a shared database. If that connection breaks, the alert identifies the computer and service involved so you have a useful starting point.
Get an email or text when the connection breaks
Set the recipients for the connection you want to watch. Project Zero supports email notifications and text messages, with texts sent through your company’s configured Twilio account.
An alert might read:
Project Zero: App Server can’t reach Production Database.
Connection failures can include a timeout, a refused connection, an address that won’t resolve, or a Project Zero network service that isn’t running on the monitored computer.
When the computer can reach the service again, Project Zero can send a recovery notification too.
Know when the watcher stops watching
A computer that goes offline can’t report its own connection failures.
Project Zero also watches for missing reports. If a monitored computer stops checking in for about five minutes, it can notify you that monitoring from that computer has stopped.
That message has a different meaning from a failed service check. The computer may be powered off, disconnected, or running without the Project Zero app. It tells you that you’ve lost visibility from that location; it doesn’t establish that the service itself is down.
Make the alert useful before you need it
Choose the computer whose access matters, select the service it depends on, and add the people who should receive alerts. Configure your company’s Twilio account if you want text messages.
A successful connection check confirms reachability. Application health checks can go further, verifying that a service returns the right response or completes a transaction. Both help, and they answer different questions.
With Project Zero and OpenZiti, you can keep an eye on the private service connections your work depends on and hear when one breaks.
Even if the timing is, once again, right after takeoff.
Alerts require connectivity for delivery. In-flight receipt depends on the connectivity available to your device.