Single-location vs. multi-region monitoring — when is one probe enough?

Single-location vs. multi-region monitoring — when is one probe enough?

Q: Do I really need checks from five continents for a small site?

A: For a single-region site serving a local audience, one well-placed probe near your users is fine and far less noisy. Multi-region matters when the failure modes are geographic: a CDN edge that's down in one region, BGP routing issues, GeoDNS sending some users to a dead origin, or a firewall that blocks certain IP ranges.

The real reason to go multi-region is false-positive control. Require confirmation from 2 of 3 locations before alerting — that single rule kills most flapping caused by one probe's transient network hiccup.

So: one probe to start, multi-region the moment you serve users across regions or you're tired of false alarms. Don't pay for ten locations if you only ever act on confirmation from two.

Got a question? Drop it in the comments.