Monitoring Your Spring Boot Application with Vigilmon: Actuator Health + External Uptime

Spring Boot applications power enterprise backends worldwide. Spring Boot Actuator provides internal health endpoints — but you also need external monitoring to verify users can actually reach your service. This guide combines Spring Actuator with Vigilmon for comprehensive coverage.

Spring Boot Actuator Health Endpoint

Spring Boot Actuator ships a /actuator/health endpoint out of the box.

Setup

Add to pom.xml:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-actuator</artifactId>
</dependency>

Or build.gradle:

implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-actuator'

Configure in application.yml:

management:
  endpoints:
    web:
      exposure:
        include: health
  endpoint:
    health:
      show-details: when-authorized
  health:
    defaults:
      enabled: true

This exposes GET /actuator/health which returns:

{"status":"UP"}

Custom Health Indicator

Add custom health checks:

import org.springframework.boot.actuate.health.Health;
import org.springframework.boot.actuate.health.HealthIndicator;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

@Component
public class DatabaseHealthIndicator implements HealthIndicator {

    private final DataSource dataSource;

    public DatabaseHealthIndicator(DataSource dataSource) {
        this.dataSource = dataSource;
    }

    @Override
    public Health health() {
        try (Connection conn = dataSource.getConnection()) {
            conn.prepareStatement("SELECT 1").execute();
            return Health.up().withDetail("database", "reachable").build();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            return Health.down().withDetail("error", e.getMessage()).build();
        }
    }
}

Expose a Simple Health Endpoint

If you prefer a simple endpoint without Actuator:

import org.springframework.http.ResponseEntity;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;
import java.util.Map;

@RestController
public class HealthController {

    @GetMapping("/health")
    public ResponseEntity<Map<String, String>> health() {
        return ResponseEntity.ok(Map.of("status", "ok"));
    }
}

Setting Up Vigilmon for Spring Boot

Sign up at vigilmon.online
Click Add Monitor
URL: https://your-spring-app.com/actuator/health or /health
Check interval: 1 or 5 minutes
Alert channels: email and/or webhook
Expected status: 200
Save

Vigilmon checks from multiple geographic regions. Only alerts when 2+ regions agree your endpoint is down — no false alerts from regional network blips.

Security Consideration: Protecting Actuator Endpoints

Be careful about publicly exposing /actuator/health with full details. Use Spring Security to restrict sensitive details:

management:
  endpoint:
    health:
      show-details: when-authorized  # Only full details when authenticated
      show-components: always         # Component statuses always visible

For Vigilmon, the public /health endpoint returning {"status": "UP"} is sufficient. Keep sensitive Actuator endpoints (env, beans, etc.) behind authentication.

What to Monitor

Monitor	URL	Notes
Main health	`/actuator/health`	Core app status
Specific service	`/health`	Your custom endpoint
API entry point	`/api/v1/ping`	Specific API working
Auth endpoint	`/api/auth/verify`	Auth service up

Kubernetes Integration

spec:
  containers:
  - name: spring-app
    livenessProbe:
      httpGet:
        path: /actuator/health/liveness
        port: 8080
      initialDelaySeconds: 60
      periodSeconds: 10
    readinessProbe:
      httpGet:
        path: /actuator/health/readiness
        port: 8080
      initialDelaySeconds: 30
      periodSeconds: 5

Then add https://your-public-domain.com/actuator/health to Vigilmon for external monitoring.

Conclusion

Spring Boot Actuator gives you internal health visibility. Vigilmon gives you external uptime monitoring — verifying that users around the world can actually reach your service. Together they provide complete coverage.

Start free at vigilmon.online — 5 monitors, no credit card, live in 2 minutes.