Cron Job Monitoring

By the end of this guide, you’ll have heartbeat monitors tracking your scheduled jobs, with alerts firing when a job stops running on schedule.

Prerequisites

DevHelm CLI installed or an API token
One or more cron jobs or scheduled tasks to monitor

The heartbeat pattern

Standard monitors work by checking your service outbound. For cron jobs, the pattern is reversed — your job pings DevHelm after each successful run. If DevHelm doesn’t receive a ping within the expected window, it opens an incident.

Set up a heartbeat monitor

Create the monitor

devhelm monitors create \
  --name "Nightly Backup" \
  --type HEARTBEAT

monitors:
  - name: Nightly Backup
    type: HEARTBEAT
    config:
      expectedInterval: 86400
      gracePeriod: 3600

The CLI creates heartbeat monitors with a 60-second expected interval and grace period. For a daily job like this one, set expectedInterval and gracePeriod via YAML config-as-code (shown above) or the API.

Config field	Value	Meaning
`expectedInterval`	`86400`	Job runs every 24 hours
`gracePeriod`	`3600`	Allow 1 hour of slack before alerting

Get the ping URL

devhelm monitors get <monitor-id>

Copy the pingUrl from the response.

Add the ping to your job

Add a curl at the end of your script:

#!/bin/bash
set -e

# Your job logic
pg_dump mydb > /backups/nightly-$(date +%Y%m%d).sql
aws s3 cp /backups/nightly-$(date +%Y%m%d).sql s3://backups/

# Ping DevHelm on success
curl -fsS -o /dev/null https://api.devhelm.io/api/v1/heartbeat/<token>

Using curl -fsS ensures the ping is only sent on HTTP success. If the script fails (set -e), the curl never runs and DevHelm eventually alerts.

Common intervals

Job	expectedInterval	gracePeriod
Every minute	`60`	`30`
Hourly	`3600`	`300` (5 min)
Daily	`86400`	`3600` (1 hour)
Weekly	`604800`	`86400` (1 day)

Advanced patterns

Kubernetes CronJobs

Add a post-completion container or use a completions-based Job with a sidecar:

apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  name: nightly-backup
spec:
  schedule: "0 2 * * *"
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          containers:
            - name: backup
              image: myapp/backup:latest
              command: ["/bin/sh", "-c"]
              args:
                - |
                  /scripts/backup.sh && \
                  curl -fsS -o /dev/null https://api.devhelm.io/api/v1/heartbeat/$HEARTBEAT_TOKEN
              env:
                - name: HEARTBEAT_TOKEN
                  valueFrom:
                    secretKeyRef:
                      name: devhelm-heartbeats
                      key: nightly-backup
          restartPolicy: OnFailure

Long-running workers

For workers that process queues continuously, add a periodic heartbeat in the main loop:

import requests
import time

HEARTBEAT_URL = "https://api.devhelm.io/api/v1/heartbeat/<token>"
HEARTBEAT_INTERVAL = 300  # 5 minutes

last_heartbeat = 0

while True:
    message = queue.receive()
    process(message)

    if time.time() - last_heartbeat > HEARTBEAT_INTERVAL:
        requests.post(HEARTBEAT_URL, timeout=5)
        last_heartbeat = time.time()

Multiple jobs, one config

Define all heartbeat monitors in a single YAML file:

version: "1"
monitors:
  - name: Nightly Backup
    type: HEARTBEAT
    config:
      expectedInterval: 86400
      gracePeriod: 3600
    tags: [infrastructure]

  - name: Hourly Report Generation
    type: HEARTBEAT
    config:
      expectedInterval: 3600
      gracePeriod: 300
    tags: [reporting]

  - name: Daily Cleanup
    type: HEARTBEAT
    config:
      expectedInterval: 86400
      gracePeriod: 21600
    tags: [maintenance]

Ping only on success

Always use set -e or equivalent error handling so the ping is skipped when the job fails. This way DevHelm catches both “job didn’t run” and “job ran but failed” scenarios.

Next steps

Heartbeat reference

Full heartbeat configuration and assertions.

First alert

Get notified when a heartbeat goes silent.

Monitoring as Code

Manage all heartbeat monitors in YAML.

Overview

Getting Started

Monitoring Guides

Alerting Guides

Incident Guides

Status Data Guides

Monitoring as Code Guides

Cron Job Monitoring

The heartbeat pattern

Set up a heartbeat monitor

Common intervals

Advanced patterns

Next steps

Heartbeat reference

First alert

Monitoring as Code

​The heartbeat pattern

​Set up a heartbeat monitor

​Common intervals

​Advanced patterns

​Next steps

Heartbeat reference

First alert

Monitoring as Code

The heartbeat pattern

Set up a heartbeat monitor

Common intervals

Advanced patterns

Next steps