Disclaimer: This is for folks who are running services on Windows machines and does not have more than one device. I am neither an expert at self hosting nor PowerShell. I curated most of this code by doing a lot of “Google-ing” and testing over the years. Feel free to correct any mistakes I have in the code.

Background

TLDR: Windows user needs an uptime monitoring solution

Whenever I searched for uptime monitoring apps, most of the ones that showed up were either hosted on Linux or containers and all I wanted was a a simple exe installation file for some app that will send me alerts when a service or the computer was down. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything. If you know one, feel free to recommend them.

To get uptime monitoring on Windows, I had to turn to scripting along with a hosted solution (because you shouldn’t host the monitoring service on the same device as where your apps are running in case the machine goes down). I searched and tested a lot of code to finally end up with the following.

Now, I have services running on both Windows and Linux and I use Uptime Kuma and the following code for monitoring. But, for people who are still on Windows and haven’t made the jump to Linux/containers, you could use these scripts to monitor your services with the same device.

Solution

TLDR: A PowerShell script would check the services/processes/URLs/ports and ping the hosted solution to send out notification.

What I came up with is a PowerShell script that would run every 5 minutes (your preference) using Windows Task Scheduler to check if a Service/Process/URL/Port is up or down and send a ping to Healthchecks.io accordingly.

Prereqs

1. Sign up on healthchecks.io and create a project

2. Add integration to your favorite notification method (There are several options; I use Telegram)

3. Add a Check on Healthchecks.io for each of the service you want to monitor. Ex: Radarr, Bazarr, Jellyfin

   When creating the check, make sure to remember the Slug you used (custom or autogenerated) for that service.

4. Install latest version of PowerShell 7

5. Create a PowerShell file in your desired location. Ex: healthcheck.ps1 in the C drive

6. Go to project settings on Healthchecks.io, get the Ping key, and assign it to a variable in the script

   Ex: $HC= "https://hc-ping.com/<YOUR_PING_KEY>/"

   The Ping key is used for pinging Healthchecks.io based on the status of the service.

Code

1. There are two ways you can write the code: Either check one service or loop through a list.

Port

1. To monitor a list of ports, we need to add them to the Services.csv file.

   The names of the services need to match the Slug you created earlier because, Healthchecks.io uses that to figure out which Check to ping.

Ex:

"Service", "Port"
"qbittorrent", "5656"
"radarr", "7878"
"sonarr", "8989"
"prowlarr", "9696"

1. Then copy the following code to healthcheck.ps1:

Import-CSV C:\Services.csv | foreach{
    Write-Output ""
    Write-Output $($_.Service)
    Write-Output "------------------------"
    $RESPONSE = Test-Connection localhost -TcpPort $($_.Port)
    if ($RESPONSE -eq "True") {
        Write-Host "$($_.Service) is running"
        curl $HC$($_.Service)
    } else {
        Write-Host "$($_.Service) is not running"
        curl $HC$($_.Service)/fail
    }
}

The script looks through the Services.csv file (Line 1) and check if each of those ports are listening ($($_.Port) on Line 5) and pings Healthchecks.io (Line 8 or 11) based on their status with their appropriate name ($($_.Service)). If the port is not listening, it will ping the URL with a trailing /fail (Line 11) to indicate it is down.

Service

1. The following code is to check if a service is running.

   You can add more services on line 1 in comma separated values. Ex: @("bazarr","flaresolverr")

   This also needs to match the Slug.

$SERVICES = @("bazarr")
foreach($SERVICE in $SERVICES) {
    Write-Output ""
    Write-Output $SERVICE
    Write-Output "------------------------"
    $RESPONSE = Get-Service $SERVICE | Select-Object Status
    if ($RESPONSE.Status -eq "Running") {
        Write-Host "$SERVICE is running"
        curl $HC$SERVICE
    } else {
        Write-Host "$SERVICE is not running"
        curl $HC$SERVICE/fail
    }
}

The script looks through the list of services (Line 1) and check if each of those are running (Line 6) and pings Healthchecks.io based on their status.

Process

1. The following code is to check if a process is running.

   Line 1 needs to match their Slug

$PROCESSES = @("tautulli","jellyfin")
foreach($PROCESS in $PROCESSES) {
	Write-Output ""
	Write-Output $PROCESS
	Write-Output "------------------------"	
	$RESPONSE = Get-Process -Name $PROCESS -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
	if ($RESPONSE -eq $null) {
		# Write-Host "$PROCESS is not running"
		curl $HC$PROCESS/fail
	} else {
		# Write-Host "$PROCESS is running"
		curl $HC$PROCESS
	}
}

URL

1. This can be used to check if a URL is responding.

   Line 1 needs to match the Slug

$WEBSVC = "google"
$GOOGLE = "https://google.com"
Write-Output ""
Write-Output $WEBSVC
Write-Output "------------------------"
$RESPONSE = Invoke-WebRequest -URI $GOOGLE -SkipCertificateCheck
if ($RESPONSE.StatusCode -eq 200) {
    # Write-Host "$WEBSVC is running"
    curl $HC$WEBSVC
} else {
    # Write-Host "$WEBSVC is not running"
    curl $HC$WEBSVC/fail
}

Ping other machines

1. If you have more than one machine and you want to check their status with the Windows host, you can check it by pinging them

2. Here also I use a CSV file to list the machines. Make sure the server names matches their Slug

   Ex:

   "Server", "IP"
   "server2", "192.168.0.202"
   "server3", "192.168.0.203"
   

Import-CSV C:\Servers.csv | foreach{
    Write-Output ""
    Write-Output $($_.Server)
    Write-Output "------------------------"
    $RESPONSE = Test-Connection $($_.IP) -Count 1 | Select-Object Status
    if ($RESPONSE.Status -eq "Success") {
        # Write-Host "$($_.Server) is running"
        curl $HC$($_.Server)
    } else {
        # Write-Host "$($_.Server) is not running"
        curl $HC$($_.Server)/fail
    }
}

Task Scheduler

For the script to execute in intervals, you need to create a scheduled task.

1. Open Task Scheduler, navigate to the Library, and click on Create Task on the right
2. Give it a name. Ex: Healthcheck
   1. Choose Run whether user is logged on or not
   2. Choose Hidden if needed
3. On Triggers tab, click on New
   1. Choose On a schedule
   2. Choose One time and select an older date than your current date
   3. Select Repeat task every and choose the desired time and duration. Ex: 5 minutes indefinitely
   4. Select Enabled
4. On Actions tab, click on New
   1. Choose Start a program
   2. Add the path to PowerShell 7 in Program: "C:\Program Files\PowerShell\7\pwsh.exe"
   3. Point to the script in arguments: -windowstyle hidden -NoProfile -NoLogo -NonInteractive -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File C:\healthcheck.ps1
5. Rest of the tabs, you can choose whatever is appropriate for you.
6. Hit Ok/Apply and exit

Notification Method

Depending on the integration you chose, set it up using the Healthchecks docs.

I am using Telegram with the following configuration:

Name: Telegram
Execute on "down" events: POST https://api.telegram.org/bot<ID>/sendMessage
Request Body:
```
{
    "chat_id": "<CHAT ID>",
    "text": "🔴 $NAME is DOWN",
    "parse_mode": "HTML",
    "no_webpage": true
}
```
Request Headers: Content-Type: application/json
Execute on "up" events: POST https://api.telegram.org/bot<ID>/sendMessage
Request Body:
```
{
"chat_id": "<CHAT ID>",
"text": "🟢 $NAME is UP",
"parse_mode": "HTML",
"no_webpage": true
}
```
Request Headers: Content-Type: application/json

Closing

You can monitor up to 20 services for free. You can also selfhost Healthchecks instance (wouldn’t recommend if you only have one machine).

I’ve been wanting to give something back to the community for a while. I hope this is useful to some of you. Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions. Thank you for reading!