Ping Tool
A practical reference for teams that need to check basic host reachability.
Ping Tool from Sandglass helps you check basic host reachability. Use the result to decide what to monitor continuously.
When to reach for this tool
Reach for this when you need to check basic host reachability during setup, debugging, or an incident review. A one-off check is useful for diagnosis, but production systems need continuous monitoring once the immediate question is answered.
- Ping confirms the host is on the network, nothing more.
- Many hosts block ICMP, so a failed ping is not always an outage.
- Pair it with HTTP or TCP to test the actual service.
From one-off check to continuous monitor
Use ping as a quick network-reachability signal, then pair it with HTTP or TCP checks when what you really care about is whether the application is responding.
- Recreate the same check in Sandglass on an interval so the next change is caught without re-running the lookup.
- Send failures to email, a Slack webhook channel, or a generic webhook owned by whoever fixes the problem.
- Track the result over time instead of treating one manual reading as the final answer.
Why a lookup is not monitoring
A host that answers ping can still be serving errors. Reachability is the floor, not proof that the service behind the host works.
Use this tool well
Step 1: Run the check and read the result
Use the output to confirm the current state, and treat anything surprising as a starting point for diagnosis rather than a verdict.
Step 2: Define what healthy means
Write down which results count as healthy, degraded, or failed before you automate anything.
Step 3: Promote it to a continuous monitor
Recreate the same check in Sandglass on an interval so the next change is caught automatically.
Step 4: Route the alert to an owner
Send failures to email, a Slack webhook channel, or a generic webhook owned by whoever will fix them.