SSH Bridge Host Monitoring: Heartbeats, Metrics, and Email Alerts
SSH access is usually where server work begins, but knowing whether a server is reachable before you connect is just as important. SSH Bridge Host Monitoring adds a lightweight monitoring layer around the hosts you already manage, so you can see which machines are online, which are stale, and which have stopped sending heartbeats.
What Host Monitoring Does
Host Monitoring installs a small agent on a selected host. That agent checks in with the SSH Bridge backend on a regular interval and sends basic status information. In the SSH Bridge app, monitored hosts appear with live status and lightweight metrics such as CPU, RAM, and disk usage.
This is not meant to replace a full observability stack for complex production systems. Instead, it gives SSH Bridge users a fast operational signal inside the same app they already use for SSH, SFTP, snippets, port forwarding, and team workflows.
Why Heartbeats Matter
A heartbeat is a simple promise from the agent: the host is still there, the agent is running, and the backend can receive updates. When heartbeats arrive on time, SSH Bridge marks the monitor as online. If heartbeats become old, the status can become stale or offline.
This helps answer the first question before troubleshooting begins: is the host still checking in? For teams, that status is useful because everyone sees the same monitor state across connected devices.
Metrics in the Monitoring View
The Monitoring view shows recent CPU, RAM, and disk percentages for each monitored host. These metrics are intentionally focused. They give you enough context to spot obvious pressure, such as a host with very high memory usage or a disk that is nearly full, without turning the SSH client into a noisy dashboard.
When you need more detail, you can still open an SSH terminal, inspect logs, run diagnostics, or use your dedicated monitoring platform. SSH Bridge keeps the first signal close to the operational workflow.
Fresh Agent Installs
When monitoring starts, SSH Bridge installs a fresh monitor agent on the host. This matters because monitoring code may improve over time. A fresh install helps avoid old agent behavior on servers that have not been monitored recently.
Stopping a monitor removes the monitor record from the backend. The agent is then told to stop on a later heartbeat if it is still running. When SSH Bridge can connect to the host during stop, it can also remove local launch configuration so the next start is clean.
Email Notifications for Missed Heartbeats
Host Monitoring can send email notifications when a host misses enough heartbeats. Owners and company admins can enable this in the SSH Bridge web app under Settings, then Monitoring. The settings include email notifications, missed heartbeat count, max notifications, and cooldown minutes.
The missed heartbeat count decides when an incident begins. For example, if the heartbeat interval is 30 seconds and the threshold is 3, SSH Bridge waits for multiple missed intervals before sending an alert. Max notifications prevents unlimited email for the same incident, while cooldown minutes controls how long SSH Bridge waits before sending another alert.
Who Receives Alerts
For personal accounts, alerts go to the host owner. For company accounts, alerts can go to the owner and admins so the right people know when a monitored host stops checking in. The alert email includes the host name, hostname, host ID, monitor ID, last heartbeat time, and the configured missed heartbeat threshold.
When the host recovers and sends a healthy heartbeat, SSH Bridge resets the alert state and notification count. That makes the next missing-heartbeat event a fresh incident.
Where It Fits
Host Monitoring fits best as an operational companion to SSH. It answers quick questions before a connection: is the host alive, when did it last check in, and are basic resources under pressure? It is especially useful for small teams, personal infrastructure, lab servers, development machines, and shared hosts where everyone benefits from a common status view.
For large production environments, SSH Bridge Monitoring can sit beside tools like Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, or other observability systems. Those tools provide deep metrics and alert routing. SSH Bridge keeps a simple host signal beside the SSH workflow.
Getting Started
Make sure your plan includes Host Monitoring, then open the desktop app, go to Hosts, and start monitoring from the host menu. After the agent is installed and the first heartbeat arrives, the host appears in the Monitoring section.
To enable email alerts, open the web app, go to Settings, choose Monitoring, enable email notifications, set the thresholds, and save. From that point on, SSH Bridge can alert you when a monitored host stops sending heartbeats.
Server work is easier when the status is visible before you connect. Host Monitoring gives SSH Bridge users that first signal directly where they work.