There are three dashboards in Netreo Essentials:
Performance Dashboard visualizes the performance history all monitored metrics and resources.
Status Dashboard shows the current status of all resources. Learn more here.
Alerts Dashboard shows all currently active alerts. Learn more here.
Data in each dashboard is refreshed automatically each monitoring cycle. The refresh interval is 1 minute for the Professional and Ultimate Plans and 10 minutes in the Free Plan.
Viewing and Customizing the Performance Dashboard
Users can modify the layout of the Performance Dashboard by selecting dashlet density, changing the order of the dashlets, etc. These settings are saved on a per-user basis.
The data in the Performance Dashboard can be displayed using dense, sparse and mini dashlet layouts. To switch between layouts, use the dropdown in the top right corner of the Performance Dashboard (1 in the image below).
Sparse Layout (default) shows metrics in the form of charts, tables and gauges.
Dense Layout shows metrics in the form of mini charts, tables and gauges.
Mini Layout shows metrics in the form of gauges only.
The Performance Dashboard can display data in 1-, 6-, 12-, 24-, 48-hour and 1-week views. The values for metrics displayed in longer periods are proactively aggregated. This helps to prevent performance penalties when data is displayed for those longer periods.
To switch the time view, use the dropdown in the top right corner of the Performance Dashboard (2 in the top image).
Displaying Historical Data
By default, data in the Performance Dashboard is displayed in “Live mode” (i.e. in real-time). It is possible to turn off Live mode and switch to "Historic mode" to investigate past events in more detail. When in Historic mode, Netreo Essentials displays the state of the whole Performance Dashboard as it was during the selected time period.
To show Historical mode, toggle the Live mode switch in the top right corner of the Performance Dashboard (3 in the top image). Then select a place in the timeline that appears to display the data you would like to see. A link to appropriate Historical mode timestamps are included in the notifications for any Netreo Essentials alerts.
Data displayed in Historic mode is stored according to the Netreo Essentials data retention policy.
Creating Multiple Performance Dashboards
Users can create multiple dashboards within the Performance Dashboard to optimize the dashlet layout for certain groups of users (these dashboards appear as tabs on the Performance Dashboard). For example, there might be a dashboard that acts as a dedicated dashboard for database administrators, which displays all resources in the “Databases” category. Categories serve as the basis for any newly added dashboards. So, development teams might define a category for each application or environment they work on (Dev, Test, Staging, Production, etc.).
Note: During the Setup Wizard stage, Netreo Essentials will automatically suggest categories for ARM resources based on resource group information from Azure.
Categories may be edited in the resource configuration dialog. One resource may belong to multiple categories.
In the Performance dashboard, selecting the dropdown next to the category name allows users to quickly rename the category and add or remove resources from the category.
Information Displayed for Each Resource
Each dashboard tab in the Performance Dashboard consists of one or more Dashlets which display data for an individual monitored resource.
The graphs and gauges visualize selected numeric metrics. Hovering over a specific point in a graph will display the exact values of all metrics for that time on the graph (1 in the image below).
Raised Alerts are visualized in charts using alert icons (2 and 3 in the image below).
Triggered Actions are visualized in charts using an action icon (1, 2 and 3 in the image below).
Using buttons in the top left corner of the Dashlet users can display information, such as:
(1) Numeric metrics - visualized using charts and gauges.
(2) Non-numeric metrics - usually visualized using tables.
(3) Status - if Status metric is defined.
(5) Alert History - if any alerts are defined.
- (6) Action History - if any automated actions are defined.
- (7) Monitoring Log - very useful for debugging issues.
Using buttons in the top right corner of a Dashlet users can:
(1) Disable/enable monitoring of a specific resource.
(2) Download metric data in CSV format.
(3) Manually trigger available Actions on the resource.
(4) Display the Resource Configuration dialog in order to edit configuration.
(5) Maximize the Dashlet to see all of the other non-numeric metrics on one screen.
Using buttons in the top left corner of a chart users can switch between Area and Line charts, as well as switch between displaying Absolute and Relative values in charts.
By default, Netreo Essentials displays metrics using relative (normalized) values. Some metrics might be difficult to see using the absolute values chart, especially if their absolute values are small compared to absolute values of other metrics. For example, compare the charts for the same resource using relative values (image above) and absolute values (image below).
Displaying Metrics Using Gauges
Gauges are visual tools that allow you to quickly identify the most important problems with just one quick look. Gauges are always displayed in each dashboard density (sparse, dense and mini).
To visualize a metric using Gauge, in the Resource Configuration Dialog select the “Highlight on Dashboard” checkbox and specify the best and worst possible values. These values are then used to determine the color displayed in the gauge.
For example, when monitoring CPU or memory usage, the the best possible value is 0 and the worst is 100. When monitoring the free disk space, 0 would be the worst value and the disk's capacity value would be the best.
You may select up to three numeric metrics for each resource. If more than that are selected, Netreo Essentials will display only the first three metrics as gauges and ignore the rest.