Table of Contents

  • Overview - quick overview of Dashboard Screen functionality
  • Customizations - users can customize many settings and view points
  • Multiple Dashboards - users can create different dashboards and categorize information
  • Metric Views - users can switch between different views of the same dashlet to see non-numeric data, alert history, action history, and more
  • Timeline - users can see their dashboards back in time up to a month in order 



Overview


Dashboards allow users to visualize performance metrics and other characteristics of their monitored resources.  Dashboards self-update (trial or paid subscriptions: every minute, Starter/Free subscriptions: every 10 minutes), are highly customizable, instrumented to highlight important information and provide quick access to configuration settings.  


** Important: Dashboards can show data back in time that allows for root cause analysis.





Customizations


Dashboard consits of individual dashlets for each resource.  Dashlets are structured into 3 areas: Title bar, menu bar, and content area.  

  • Title bar contains icons on the right-hand side for editing a resource, removing a resource and display resource dashlet in a maximized state.  Maximizing a resource is useful if one needs to see everything that has been happening with a particular resource, including charts, alerts, actions, and other metircs.
  • Menu bar contains icons that show different views of data in the content area.
  • Content area shows numeric metrics as charts, recently executed alerts and actions, as well as any non-numeric metrics that were requested to be highlighted on the dashboard.

Dashlets can be dragged around and re-arranged.  Dashlet sequence order is remembered after navigation.  Users can see their dashboard in 1/6/12/24hr views. Users can customize their dashboards to see dashlets in dense, sparse and mini layouts. Mini layout shows only highlighted metrics, while other layouts show more indepth information about each resource.

Numeric charts can be furhter customized by allowing Relative vs. Absolute views, and Line vs. Area charts displays.

Dashboard customizations are remembered for each particular CloudMonix user.  



Multiple Dashboards

Users are able to create multiple dashboards by assigning different Categories to their resources.  Category assignment is performed when editing monitoring settings of a resource.  When all resources have been removed from a category, the category itself ceases to exist.





Metric Views


By default, individual dashlets show three default views: Charts, Alert history and Action history.  (Action History is only available to Trial and Ultimate users)

Charts view shows all of the numeric metrics that are tracked by CloudMonix.  Users can switch from Area charts to Line charts, or from Absolute values to Relative values via icons on the left-hand side.

Chart view can also show up to three important metrics as gauges to the right of the chart area.  These metrics are added to dashboards by being marked as "Highlight on Dashboard" when user is configuring metrics in resources. Specifying best and worst values for a numeric metric, allows the gauge to properly display the green-yellow-red coloring of the gauge to provide relevant visual effect.

Non-numerical metrics, such as event logs, process lists, statuses and more, can be placed on the dashboard in separate views as grids.  "Highlight on Dashboard" checkbox when editing a metric is used for that purpose.



Timeline


Dashboard allows the user to switch between 1hr, 6hr, 12hr, and 24hr views.

Users are able to view their dashboards back in time by switching OFF Live mode and using the slider and navigation buttons to change the curently displayed time for the dashboard.  This is helpful when doing an RCA (root cause analysis) of a particular problem that happened in the past.  Navigation in the past happens according to CloudMonix data retention policy.

Specifically, 1-hr dashboards show raw data and are generally not available outside of current and past clock-months.  Switching to 6hr or higher-range dashboards, will display data past the 1-2months time limit.