try to fix issues with previous pr for synthetics (#3347)

Co-authored-by: Severin Neumann <neumanns@cisco.com>

content/en/blog/2023/synthetic-testing/index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,103 @@
+---
+title: Portable Synthetic HTTP Testing with OpenTelemetry
+linkTitle: Synthetic HTTP testing
+date: 2023-10-05
+author: '[Carter Socha](https://github.com/cartersocha) (Lightstep)'
+cSpell:ignore: httpcheck
+---
+
+Synthetic tests are an essential part of the Observability toolkit. They can be
+used to measure application SLAs, monitor endpoints in various geographies,
+navigate a web page like a user, or identify post deployment errors before your
+customers encounter them.
+
+This blog is going to focus on HTTP based synthetic availability testing. Many
+vendors offer various options for availability testing with generous free tiers
+but monitoring endpoints at enterprise scale can quickly spiral into 1000s of
+tests that can’t be easily transferred when migrating Observability vendors.
+OpenTelemetry (OTel) is committed to the portability of Observability data to
+help users maximize their visibility into their services and get the most out of
+their Observability investments without the need to continually recreate the
+same capabilities.
+
+The community is continually improving the project's capabilities and it can be
+easy to miss new features. In the
+[v0.63.0 release](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.63.0),
+the [OTel Collector](/docs/collector/) added support for synthetic HTTP checks
+via a receiver called the
+[HTTP Check Receiver](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/main/receiver/httpcheckreceiver).
+This component sends a request via HTTP or HTTPS and produces metrics to capture
+the duration of the request and record the returned status code. You can now
+deploy an agent to your preferred environment to test public OR private
+endpoints without the need to whitelist IPs in your firewall and transfer the
+tests between your preferred destination like any other piece of OTel data.
+
+### Deploy your first OTel Synthetic ping test(s)
+
+Getting started with OTel synthetics is simple. You configure your Collector
+like usual and add the HTTP Check receiver with your chosen endpoints, HTTP
+verb, and collection interval. Here’s a basic Collector configuration to get you
+started. Sending a request body is not supported yet but you can still send
+custom headers in the various requests.
+
+```yaml
+receivers:
+  httpcheck:
+    targets:
+      - endpoint: https://api.restful-api.dev/objects
+        method: GET
+      - endpoint: https://httpbin.org/delete
+        method: DELETE
+      - endpoint: https://httpbin.org/post
+        method: POST
+        headers:
+          test-key: 'test-123'
+    collection_interval: 10s
+
+exporters:
+  #Your chosen exporter
+
+processors:
+  batch:
+
+service:
+  pipelines:
+    metrics:
+      receivers: [httpcheck]
+      processors: [batch]
+      #exporters: [your-exporter]
+```
+
+### Synthetic Test Output
+
+The receiver generates 3 metrics by default: `httpcheck.duration`
+`httpcheck.status` and `httpcheck.error`. The metrics can be used in
+visualizations or to define alerts. If no errors occur then the
+`httpcheck.error` chart won’t be populated. Here are some example screenshots
+from the `httpcheck.duration` and `httpcheck.status` metrics.
+
+#### Duration Check
+
+![Synthetic duration check result](httpcheck-duration.png 'Synthetic duration check result')
+
+#### Status Check
+
+![Synthetic status check result](httpcheck-status.png 'Synthetic status check result')
+
+### What's Next?
+
+Synthetic testing is an exciting new capability for OTel that the community
+hopes to evolve over time. If you have any specific requests around new
+Synthetic capabilities feel free to open an issue in the
+[opentelemetry-collector-contrib](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/)
+repository for the HTTP Check receiver or open a PR and add the capabilities
+yourself. All contributions and feedback are welcome and appreciated.
+
+For more complex browser based tests the
+[Selenium project](https://www.selenium.dev/documentation/grid/advanced_features/observability/)
+has a native OpenTelemetry integration available. I'm hoping to write a follow
+up blog on how to leverage this data.
+
+In the future I'd like to see us add support for custom request bodies or
+ingesting results from other complex browser test frameworks like
+[Playwright](https://playwright.dev/). Happy testing!

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