Apache HTTP Server exposes a status module that gives iPM much richer detail than a basic port check alone.
Enabling mod_status
Most Apache installations ship with mod_status available but not always enabled. To use it:
- Enable mod_status in the Apache configuration if it isn't already.
- Configure the status endpoint (commonly /server-status) and restrict access to it — typically to localhost or the iPM server's IP address only, since this endpoint reveals internal server detail.
- Restart or reload Apache to apply the change.
- Point the Apache service check in iPM at that status endpoint.
What you can monitor
- Process / port — is the Apache process running and listening on its configured port (usually 80 and/or 443)
- Worker status — how many workers are busy versus idle, and how close the server is to its configured worker limit
- Requests per second and bytes served — throughput trends over time, useful for capacity planning and for spotting unusual traffic spikes
- HTTP response check — a direct request to a specific URL, confirming the application behind Apache is actually returning a healthy response, not just that Apache itself is up
Reading worker saturation
If busy workers are consistently near the configured maximum, Apache will start queuing or rejecting new connections even though the process itself looks "up" — this is one of the more common causes of a site that's technically online but effectively unreachable during a traffic spike. A threshold alert on worker utilization catches this well before it becomes a full outage.
Combine an HTTP check against a real page (not just the status endpoint) with the mod_status metrics above for the fullest picture of an Apache server's health.