Global Uptime Monitoring: Why Single-Location Checks Aren't Enough

Who This Is For

This guide is for DevOps teams and site reliability engineers who serve users globally and need to ensure worldwide availability. If your users are in multiple countries or continents, single-location monitoring isn't enough.

The Problem with Single-Location Monitoring

Missing Regional Outages

Your site could be down in Europe while perfectly fine in the US:

US Monitoring Server: "Site is up! ✓"
European Users: "Can't access the site!"

With single-location (US) monitoring:
→ No alert triggered
→ Europeans suffer in silence
→ You don't know there's a problem

False Positives

Network issues between your monitor and site aren't real outages:

Scenario: Network hiccup between monitoring server and your site

Single-location monitoring:
→ Check fails
→ Alert triggers
→ You investigate
→ Everything looks fine
→ "False alarm"

Multi-region monitoring:
→ 1 location fails, 2 succeed
→ No alert (recognized as monitoring network issue)
→ No unnecessary wake-up

Inaccurate Uptime Data

Single-location data can be skewed:

Good local peering = looks great
Poor local peering = looks worse than reality
Regional CDN issues = missed entirely

How Multi-Region Monitoring Works

Geographic Distribution

Checks run from multiple locations simultaneously:

Your Site: example.com

Monitoring Locations:
├── US East (Virginia)     → Check every 30s
├── US West (Oregon)       → Check every 30s
├── Europe (Frankfurt)     → Check every 30s
├── Asia (Singapore)       → Check every 30s
└── Australia (Sydney)     → Check every 30s

Consensus-Based Alerting

Most tools require multiple failures before alerting:

Alert Logic: Alert if 2+ locations fail

Scenario A: Network blip
├── US East: ✓ Up
├── US West: ✗ Timeout
├── Europe: ✓ Up
└── Result: No alert (1/3 failed)

Scenario B: Real outage
├── US East: ✗ 503 Error
├── US West: ✗ 503 Error
├── Europe: ✗ 503 Error
└── Result: Alert! (3/3 failed)

Scenario C: Regional outage
├── US East: ✗ Timeout
├── US West: ✗ Timeout
├── Europe: ✓ Up
└── Result: Alert! (2/3 failed, regional issue)

Wakestack's Global Monitoring

Monitoring Locations

Wakestack monitors from multiple regions:

North America: US East, US West
Europe: Frankfurt, London
Asia Pacific: Singapore, Tokyo
Australia: Sydney

Smart Alerting

Configure consensus requirements:

Alert when: 2 out of 3 locations fail
Alert after: 2 consecutive check failures

Regional Performance Data

See response times from each location:

example.com Response Times:
├── US East:     125ms
├── US West:     145ms
├── Europe:      320ms  ← Slower (expected)
├── Singapore:   450ms  ← CDN might help
└── Australia:   480ms

Setting Up Global Monitoring

Step 1: Choose Monitoring Locations

Select locations that match your user base:

User Base	Recommended Locations
US only	US East, US West
North America + Europe	US East, US West, Frankfurt
Global	US East, Europe, Singapore + more

Step 2: Configure Alert Thresholds

Set consensus requirements:

Locations: 4 selected
Alert if: 2+ locations fail
Consecutive failures: 2

Step 3: Monitor Regional Endpoints

If you have regional deployments:

us.example.com     → Monitor from US locations
eu.example.com     → Monitor from EU locations
api.example.com    → Monitor from all locations

Step 4: Set Regional Response Time Thresholds

Expected latency varies by distance:

US users to US server: < 200ms
EU users to US server: 200-400ms
Asia users to US server: 300-500ms

Set appropriate thresholds per region.

Global Monitoring Best Practices

1. Match Locations to Users

Know where your users are:

If 80% of users are in US + EU:
→ Focus monitoring on US East, US West, Frankfurt

If users are truly global:
→ Add Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney

2. Use CDN? Monitor CDN Edges

CDNs serve from edge locations. Monitor:

Origin server health
CDN edge availability
Actual user experience

3. Set Location-Appropriate Thresholds

Don't alert on expected latency:

US East checking US server: Alert if > 500ms
Singapore checking US server: Alert if > 1000ms

4. Investigate Regional Performance

Regular performance reviews:

Which regions are slowest?
Is a CDN helping?
Are there routing issues?

5. Plan for Regional Redundancy

If monitoring reveals regional issues:

Consider multi-region deployment
Add CDN for static assets
Implement geo-routing

Understanding Regional Outages

Types of Regional Issues

ISP Peering Problems

Specific ISPs can't reach your site
Other ISPs work fine
Hard to detect without multi-region monitoring

DNS Propagation

DNS changes propagate at different speeds
Some regions see old records
Multi-region detects inconsistencies

CDN Regional Failure

CDN node in one region fails
Other regions serve fine
Regional monitoring catches this

Cloud Provider Regional Outage

AWS us-east-1 goes down
Your eu-west-1 deployment is fine
Regional monitoring shows the split

Investigating Regional Issues

When you see regional failures:

Check from affected region

# Use VPN or cloud shell in that region
curl -I https://example.com

Check DNS resolution

# Does DNS resolve the same globally?
dig example.com @8.8.8.8
dig example.com @1.1.1.1

Check CDN status
- CloudFlare: cloudflarestatus.com
- Fastly: status.fastly.com
- AWS CloudFront: status.aws.amazon.com
Check cloud provider status
- AWS: status.aws.amazon.com
- GCP: status.cloud.google.com
- Azure: status.azure.com