Now that the Blackbox exporter does not follow redirects, we need to
explicitly tell it to scrape the HTTPS variant of sites that have it
enabled. Otherwise, we only get info about the first HTTP-to-HTTPS
redirect response, which is not helpful for watching certificate expiry.
There are a couple of websites we scrape that simply redirect to another
name (e.g. _pyrocufflink.net_ → _dustin.hatch.name_, _tabitha.biz_ →
_hatchlearningcenter.org_). For these, we want to track the
availability of the first step, not the last, especially with regard to
their certificate lifetimes.
The _remote-blackbox_ group defines a system that runs
_blackbox-exporter_ and _vmagent_ in a remote (cloud) location. This
system will monitor our public web sites. This will give a better idea
of their availability from the perspective of a user on the Internet,
which can be by factors that are necessarily visible from within the
network.
Dustin