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WatchTower15 Docs

Getting started

WatchTower15 gives engineering teams server, domain and security monitoring in a single platform — with a server agent that installs without root and without a single Linux capability, external checks that run on a schedule, log search built in, and alerting that turns findings into action. This guide takes you from nothing to a monitored server, a monitored domain, and your first alarm.

Prerequisites

Section titled “Prerequisites”
  • A WatchTower15 account and an organisation (created for you at sign-up).
  • An organisation token — find it in the dashboard under your organisation’s install instructions. It authorises new agents to enroll into your org.
  • For the server agent: a Linux host (x86-64 or arm64) running systemd, with outbound HTTPS to the WatchTower15 API. No inbound ports are required.

1. Install the server agent

Section titled “1. Install the server agent”

Run the one-line installer on any server you want to monitor. It downloads the agent, installs it as an unprivileged service user, enrolls the host into your organisation, and starts reporting — all without asking for root:

Terminal window
curl -fsSL https://watchtower15.com/install.sh | sh -s -- <org_token>
==> Installing WatchTower15 Server Agent on prod-01 (amd64) ...
==> Enrolling with backend at https://api.watchtower15.com
✓  Enrolled successfully (agent_id=wt15-a8f3c2e1)
✓  Monitoring active. Zero Linux capabilities required.

Within about 60 seconds the host appears in your dashboard with CPU, memory, disk and network telemetry. See Installation for Windows-container caveats, air-gapped installs, and the optional Docker container-metrics flag.

2. Add a domain to monitor

Section titled “2. Add a domain to monitor”

Server agents cover what runs on your hosts. Domains and services are watched from the outside by WatchTower15’s scanner fleet — no agent required. Add a domain in the dashboard and the platform immediately begins:

  • resolving its DNS records every 60 seconds,
  • probing reachability over HTTP/HTTPS (www and apex),
  • checking its SSL/TLS certificate and registration expiry daily.

See Uptime, domain & service checks for the full check catalogue and intervals.

3. Get alerted when something breaks

Section titled “3. Get alerted when something breaks”

Monitoring is only useful if it reaches a human. WatchTower15 ships a catalogue of alarm rules (certificate expiring, domain unreachable, DNS changed, slow response, …) that evaluate automatically after every scan. Attach a notification channel — email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, or a generic webhook — so incidents are delivered where your team already works.

See Alarms & alerting to configure thresholds, consecutive-failure counts, and escalation from warning to critical.

Core concepts at a glance

Section titled “Core concepts at a glance”

WatchTower15 has a small, consistent vocabulary. Everything else builds on it:

Term Meaning
Resource Anything monitored and metered — a server, a domain, or a service.
Agent The wt15-server-agent process reporting telemetry from a host.
Check / scan An evaluation of a resource — agent telemetry or an external probe.
Tag A key/value label (in a tag group) used to organise and target resources.
Alarm A rule over checks that opens an incident and notifies when breached.
Incident An open problem for a resource, with a severity of warning or critical.

Where to next

Section titled “Where to next”