Monitoring the Availability of HTTPS Sites

Someone asked in a previous comment if we could talk a bit more about recording HTTPS sites. For monitoring availability, it's pretty similar to recording other Web applications. As I started to test the availability of an HTTPS site, I realized there were already a couple of good write-ups on synthetic transactions that I should share:

• For good step-by-step description of creating synthetic transactions, see the Creating Basic Synthetic Web Transactions in System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2007 post (on Dustin's Tech Notes blog).
• The Operations Manager blog on Windows Live has a fantastic series going on called "OpsMgr by Example". Check out their OpsMgr by Example: Monitoring Web Applications post for a great description of starting with a simple recording and moving to a more complex one. In particular, they cover monitoring the availability of the Operations Manager Web Console.