iControl Authentication Token time-out for health monitor API Call

For the iControl REST authentication methods (either Basic Authentication or Token Based Authentication), refer to iControl REST User Guide (PDF document). If you do not want to recreate authentication tokens upon expiration, you may want to consider using the Basic Authentication, which uses the HTTP Authorization header to send the user/password information. The header looks like this:

Authorization: Basic QWxhZGRpbjpvcGVuIHNlc2FtZQ==

The user/password string is represented in Base64. See RFC 2617 for how.

An authentication token expires after 1200s (20 min) by default. You can extend it but the maximum you can set is 36000s (10h). Once expired, you need to request another token again. See also "question of limitation and expiration for rest api token".

You need to choose an appropriate user role for a read-only user. Manual Chapter: User Roles describes a number of user roles to choose from.

P.S., You can convert your user:password (note: colon in between) using JavaScript: e.g., from your browser's console,

> btoa("foo:bar")        // Converting "user/password"
< "Zm9vOmJhcg=="
> atob("Zm9vOmJhcg==")   // Back to the original string
< "foo:bar"

For Pythonistas:

>>> import base64
>>> base64.b64encode(b'foo:bar')
b'Zm9vOmJhcg=='
>>> base64.b64decode(b'Zm9vOmJhcg==')
b'foo:bar'