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* Move directories and change verbiage to guide * Move health guides * Quick fix to collectors quickstart * Fix broken links * Remove health/tutorials dir * Fix links in collectors quickstart * Fix links to go.d pages
209 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
209 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
<!--
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title: "Step 2. Get to know Netdata's dashboard"
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date: 2020-05-04
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custom_edit_url: https://github.com/netdata/netdata/edit/master/docs/guides/step-by-step/step-02.md
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-->
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# Step 2. Get to know Netdata's dashboard
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Welcome to Netdata proper! Now that you understand how Netdata works, how it's built, and why we built it, you can start
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working with the dashboard directly.
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This step-by-step guide assumes you've already installed Netdata on a system of yours. If you haven't yet, hop back over
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to ["step 0"](step-00.md#before-we-get-started) for information about our one-line installer script. Or, view the
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[installation docs](/packaging/installer/README.md) to learn more. Once you have Netdata installed, you can hop back
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over here and dig in.
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## What you'll learn in this step
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In this step of the Netdata guide, you'll learn how to:
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- [Visit and explore the dashboard](#visit-and-explore-the-dashboard)
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- [Explore available charts using menus](#explore-available-charts-using-menus)
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- [Read the descriptions accompanying charts](#read-the-descriptions-accompanying-charts)
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- [Interact with charts](#interact-with-charts)
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- [See raised alarms and the alarm log](#see-raised-alarms-and-the-alarm-log)
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Let's get started!
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## Visit and explore the dashboard
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Netdata's dashboard is where you interact with your system's metrics. Time to open it up and start exploring. Open up
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your browser of choice.
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Open up your web browser of choice and navigate to `http://NODE:19999`, replacing `NODE` with the IP address or hostname
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of your Agent. If you're unsure, try `http://localhost:19999` first. Hit **Enter**. Welcome to Netdata!
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> From here on out in this guide, we'll refer to the address you use to view your dashboard as `NODE`. Be sure to
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> replace it with either `localhost`, the IP address, or the hostname of your system.
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## Explore available charts using menus
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**Menus** are located on the right-hand side of the Netdata dashboard. You can use these to navigate to the
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charts you're interested in.
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Netdata shows all its charts on a single page, so you can also scroll up and down using the mouse wheel, your
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touchscreen/touchpad, or the scrollbar.
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Both menus and the items displayed beneath them, called **submenus**, are populated automatically by Netdata based on
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what it's collecting. If you run Netdata on many different systems using different OS types or versions, the
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menus and submenus may look a little different for each one.
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To learn more about menus, see our documentation about [navigating the standard
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dashboard](/web/gui/README.md#metrics-menus).
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> ❗ By default, Netdata only creates and displays charts if the metrics are _not zero_. So, you may be missing some
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> charts, menus, and submenus if those charts have zero metrics. You can change this by changing the **Which dimensions
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> to show?** setting to **All**. In addition, if you start Netdata and immediately load the dashboard, not all
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> charts/menus/submenus may be displayed, as some collectors can take a while to initialize.
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## Read the descriptions accompanying charts
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Many charts come with a short description of what dimensions the chart is displaying and why they matter.
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For example, here's the description that accompanies the **swap** chart.
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If you're new to health monitoring and performance troubleshooting, we recommend you spend some time reading these
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descriptions and learning more at the pages linked above.
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## Understand charts, dimensions, families, and contexts
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A **chart** is an interactive visualization of one or more collected/calculated metrics. You can see the name (also
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known as its unique ID) of a chart by looking at the top-left corner of a chart and finding the parenthesized text. On a
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Linux system, one of the first charts on the dashboard will be the system CPU chart, with the name `system.cpu`:
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A **dimension** is any value that gets shown on a chart. The value can be raw data or calculated values, such as
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percentages, aggregates, and more. Most charts will have more than one dimension, in which case it will display each in
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a different color. Here, a `system.cpu` chart is showing many dimensions, such as `user`, `system`, `softirq`, `irq`,
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and more.
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A **family** is _one_ instance of a monitored hardware or software resource that needs to be monitored and displayed
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separately from similar instances. For example, if your system has multiple partitions, Netdata will create different
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families for `/`, `/boot`, `/home`, and so on. Same goes for entire disks, network devices, and more.
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A **context** groups several charts based on the types of metrics being collected and displayed. For example, the
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**Disk** section often has many contexts: `disk.io`, `disk.ops`, `disk.backlog`, `disk.util`, and so on. Netdata uses
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this context to create individual charts and then groups them by family. You can always see the context of any chart by
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looking at its name or hovering over the chart's date.
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It's important to understand these differences, as Netdata uses charts, dimensions, families, and contexts to create
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health alarms and configure collectors. To read even more about the differences between all these elements of the
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dashboard, and how they affect other parts of Netdata, read our [dashboards
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documentation](/web/README.md#charts-contexts-families).
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## Interact with charts
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We built Netdata to be a big sandbox for learning more about your systems and applications. Time to play!
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Netdata's charts are fully interactive. You can pan through historical metrics, zoom in and out, select specific
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timeframes for further analysis, resize charts, and more.
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Best of all, Whenever you use a chart in this way, Netdata synchronizes all the other charts to match it.
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### Pan, zoom, highlight, and reset charts
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You can change how charts show their metrics in a few different ways, each of which have a few methods:
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| Change | Method #1 | Method #2 | Method #3 |
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| ------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------- |
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| **Reset** charts to default auto-refreshing state | `double click` | `double tap` (touchpad/touchscreen) | |
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| **Select** a certain timeframe | `ALT` + `mouse selection` | `⌘` + `mouse selection` (macOS) | |
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| **Pan** forward or back in time | `click and drag` | `touch and drag` (touchpad/touchscreen) | |
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| **Zoom** to a specific timeframe | `SHIFT` + `mouse selection` | | |
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| **Zoom** in/out | `SHIFT`/`ALT` + `mouse scrollwheel` | `SHIFT`/`ALT` + `two-finger pinch` (touchpad/touchscreen) | `SHIFT`/`ALT` + `two-finger scroll` (touchpad/touchscreen) |
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These interactions can also be triggered using the icons on the bottom-right corner of every chart. They are,
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respectively, `Pan Left`, `Reset`, `Pan Right`, `Zoom In`, and `Zoom Out`.
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### Show and hide dimensions
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Each dimension can be hidden by clicking on it. Hiding dimensions simplifies the chart and can help you better discover
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exactly which aspect of your system is behaving strangely.
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### Resize charts
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Additionally, resize charts by clicking-and-dragging the icon on the bottom-right corner of any chart. To restore the
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chart to its original height, double-click the same icon.
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To learn more about other options and chart interactivity, read our [dashboard documentation](/web/README.md).
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## See raised alarms and the alarm log
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Aside from performance troubleshooting, the Agent helps you monitor the health of your systems and applications. That's
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why every Netdata installation comes with dozens of pre-configured alarms that trigger alerts when your system starts
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acting strangely.
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Find the **Alarms** button in the top navigation bring up a modal that shows currently raised alarms, all running
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alarms, and the alarms log.
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Here is an example of a raised `system.cpu` alarm, followed by the full list and alarm log:
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And a static screenshot of the raised CPU alarm:
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The alarm itself is named *system - cpu**, and its context is `system.cpu`. Beneath that is an auto-updating badge that
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shows the latest value the chart that triggered the alarm.
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With the three icons beneath that and the **role** designation, you can:
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1. Scroll to the chart associated with this raised alarm.
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2. Copy a link to the badge to your clipboard.
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3. Copy the code to embed the badge onto another web page using an `<embed>` element.
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The table on the right-hand side displays information about the alarm's configuration. In above example, Netdata
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triggers a warning alarm when CPU usage is between 75 and 85%, and a critical alarm when above 85%. It's a _little_ more
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complicated than that, but we'll get into more complex health entity configurations in a later step.
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The `calculation` field is the equation used to calculate those percentages, and the `check every` field specifies how
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often Netdata should be calculating these metrics to see if the alarm should remain triggered.
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The `execute` field tells Netdata how to notify you about this alarm, and the `source` field lets you know where you can
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find the configuration file, if you'd like to edit its configuration.
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We'll cover alarm configuration in more detail later in the guide, so don't worry about it too much for now! Right
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now, it's most important that you understand how to see alarms, and parse their details, if and when they appear on your
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system.
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## What's next?
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In this step of the Netdata guide, you learned how to:
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- Visit the dashboard
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- Explore available charts (using the right-side menu)
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- Read the descriptions accompanying charts
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- Interact with charts
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- See raised alarms and the alarm log
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Next, you'll learn how to monitor multiple nodes through the dashboard.
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[Next: Monitor more than one system with Netdata →](step-03.md)
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[](<>)
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