What does a synthetic monitor display in terms of application performance?

A synthetic monitor primarily focuses on measuring and displaying the performance of applications from an end-user perspective. This includes key metrics such as response times, transaction times, and the availability of applications. One of the critical aspects it captures is the milliseconds of downtime, which indicates how long an application was unavailable during synthetic transactions executed at scheduled intervals.

By simulating real user interactions with the application, synthetic monitoring helps organizations understand whether their applications are accessible and responsive. This enables teams to proactively identify and address performance issues before they impact real users. Monitoring downtime in milliseconds is essential to gauge the reliability of the application, and it provides actionable insights for maintaining high availability and performance standards.

In contrast, the other options relate to different dimensions of performance monitoring. Monthly performance trends may track general performance over time but do not capture immediate downtime metrics. Server workload pertains to the resources used by servers, which might influence performance but is not directly shown by synthetic monitors. User traffic statistics quantify how many users interact with the application but do not directly convey performance or availability metrics. Thus, highlighting milliseconds of downtime as the most relevant output aligns perfectly with the purpose of synthetic monitoring.