The present invention provides improvements to the integration between a metric exchange protocol and a monitoring mechanism supporting load balancing by a Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) appliance in a GSLB hierarchy of appliances, using a method for triggering a monitor on a remote service. The method includes receiving, by a first appliance, metrics of a second appliance via a metric exchange connection between the first and second appliances. The first appliance includes a GSLB service and identifies a service provided via the second appliance as a remote service for GSLB. The first appliance may identify via the metrics that a state of the service is up, and determine that the metric exchange connection is down. Responsive to the determination, the first appliance may trigger a monitor to monitor the status of the service. Further, the first appliance may obtain via the monitor a second status of the service.