Hey! These docs are for version 6.4, which is no longer officially supported. Click here for the latest version, 6.7!

Dashlets

Learn about the variety of Dashlets

By default, the Dashboard offers various types of Dashlets: Overview and Technical. If you have enabled the Flow Collectors functionality, some additional Flow Collector Dashlets are enabled.

Overview Dashlets

These Dashlets are available in the second drawer called 'Overview' under the 'Configuration' area on the left-hand side.
For details about the BSM dashlets, go to BSM Dashlets. The other dashlets are documented below:

Process Map

This Dashlet allows you to upload an image to Opsview Monitor and overlay the monitored data onto the image. This data includes:

  • Hashtags
  • Host Groups
  • Hosts
  • Services
  • Performance Metrics

Example usage #1:
You could upload an image of a rack, for example, and create a 'live status' map of the rack using the health of the monitored Hosts that are within the rack, as below:

299

As you can see, on top of the picture, various metrics have been added to reflect the health and performance of the objects within the rack. This allows you to not only see 'datashelf1 is down', but where that is within a given rack ' thus reducing the time-to-resolution, should it need physical intervention.

Example usage #2:
You can use a Hashtag per data center/office, and using a map of the country, you can then see the health of each location based on objects within the given Hashtags:

408

Adding and configuring a Process Map

To add a process map to your Dashboard, simply drag the Dashlet 'Process Map' onto the Dashboard.

85

The following Dashlet appears by default on the Dashboard:

387

To configure this Dashlet, click on the 'cog' icon in the Dashlet's header:

409

You first need to add an image and once this is done, you'll be able to overlay metrics. To upload an image, you can use:

  • Upload Image: click the 'Browse' button to select a jpg or png image and click 'Upload'. The 'Image Preview' panel will show the image for your confirmation:
410
  • URL Image: this allows you to enter the full path of a web-based URL, for example, http://mysite.com/myimage.png. This image will then be downloaded on a regular defined 'Polling Interval', meaning that the Process Map image will be updated each time the image changes on the website. Once you have entered the URL, click on 'Preview' to see how the images will show within the Dashlet.

Once you are happy with the image, click 'Save'. The Dashlet is now updated:

328

Note: The image will be stretched to fill the entire space of the dashlet, so it is better to have images that roughly match the desired aspect ratio of the dashlet. The height of the dashlet is stored as a ratio, so if the column widths change (from a browser width change, or opening/closing of the dashlet drawer), the height of the dashlet will proportionally change as well.

You can now overlay metrics onto the image. Right-click on the image and select what data you wish to monitor on this Dashlet:

223

You can add as many Hashtags, Host Groups, Hosts and Services as necessary.
As an example applicable to the other objects, adding a Hashtag will display the following configuration window where you can select a pre-existing Hashtag and the size of the image that will be shown on the Dashlet image:

298

Click 'Save' and move the image overlay where relevant on the Dashlet image:

364

When you are adding 'Performance Metric', the following window is displayed.
You can choose a specific Service Check on a specific Host, and determine a custom label along with other options including arrow direction, arrow size ('Image Size').

379

You can also configure Thresholds for the numbers specified, i.e. if you are displaying network throughput with this Performance Metric, you can say 'If traffic goes about X, change the arrow to yellow/ WARNING, if it goes about Z, change the arrow to red/CRITICAL'.

380

Click 'Save' and move the image overlay where relevant on the Dashlet image:

365

Right-clicking on an overlay allows you to 'Edit' or 'Delete' it from the Process Map:

142

Hashtag Tree Map

This Dashlet displays a visual representation of the health of the Service Checks within one or more Hashtags within the Opsview Monitor systems:

362

The size of the cell is proportional to the number of Service Checks within the given Hashtag in a certain state.

To configure this Dashlet, click on the 'cog' icon in the Dashlet's header. You can then choose which Hashtags you wish to display in this particular Dashlet:

385

Note: If no hashtags are specified, only the first 100 hashtags will be retrieved.
If you configure a specific list of hashtags, there will be no limit.

Instead of selecting each hashtag one by one, you can use the 'Search' box type in a string that will include every hashtag matching that string. This means that when you add a new hashtag that matches this Search string, the hashtag will be automatically included on this Dashlet.

On the Dashlet, you can:

  • hover over each Hashtag to view how many Service Checks are in the given state, within the specific Hashtag
  • click on a Hashtag opens a separate tab where you can see the details for the clicked Hashtag and see all the associated Service Checks in a list view.

Hashtag List

This Dashlet provides a cut-down version of the summary view found within the Hashtags section of 'Monitoring':

366

The Dashlet will display the Name of the Hashtag and its Status. This table can be sorted alphabetically or by Status severity, i.e. CRITICAL, WARNING, UNKNOWN or OK.

To configure this Dashlet, click on the 'cog' icon in the Dashlet's header.
You can then choose which Hashtags you wish to display in this particular Dashlet:

388

Note: If no hashtags are specified, only the first 100 hashtags will be retrieved.
If you configure a specific list of hashtags, there will be no limit.

Instead of selecting each hashtag one by one, you can use the 'Search' box type in a string that will include every hashtag matching that string. This means that when you add a new hashtag that matches this Search string, the hashtag will be automatically included on this Dashlet.

Hashtag Cells

This Dashlet provides a cut-down version of the Grid View found within the Hashtags section of 'Monitoring':

365

The Dashlet will display the description (if it exists) or else the name of each Hashtag in individual cells and the cell's color will indicate the status of the Hashtag.

To configure this Dashlet, click on the 'cog' icon in the Dashlet's header.
You can then choose which Hashtags you wish to display in this particular Dashlet:

308

Note: If no hashtags are specified, only the first 100 hashtags will be retrieved.
If you configure a specific list of hashtags, there will be no limit.

Instead of selecting each hashtag one by one, you can use the 'Search' box type in a string that will include every hashtag matching that string. This means that when you add a new hashtag that matches this Search string, the hashtag will be automatically included on this Dashlet.

You can also define how the Dashlet should display by using the 'Sort by' options.

Technical Dashlets

These Dashlets are available in the second drawer called 'Technical' under the 'Configuration' area on the left-hand side.

Performance Gauge

This Dashlet is used to display one or more Service Checks in a 'gauge' style, with the ability to show and threshold the WARNING and CRITICAL levels. Below is an example of a performance gauge used to measure available file system storage:

311

To configure this Dashlet, click on the 'cog' icon in the Dashlet's header.

391

In the Dashlet we only have one series, 'Opsview::Disk: /::root' (Host::Service Check::Metric), however, you can use more than one and click the 'Add' button to cumulate them in the same Dashlet.
The available fields to set a series are:

  • Metric label: to give the gauge a name
  • Minimum and maximum value: are User set, i.e. the left and right of the performance gauge, as is the WARNING and CRITICAL threshold fields.
  • Thresholds: to define when the value is greater than WARNING/CRITICAL, or conversely you can have thresholds defined when the value returned is lesser than WARNING/CRITICAL (i.e. space remaining, etc).
  • Threshold matched when >= (ge): if ticked, then the critical value must be higher than the warning value.
  • Threshold matched when <= (ge): if ticked, the warning value must be higher than the critical value.
  • Treat thresholds as a percentage of difference between max and min: if ticked, the warning and critical values must be within 0 to 100%, otherwise they must be between the minimum and maximum values.
  • Humanise Values: when ticked, Opsview Monitor to try and 'humanise' the returned value, i.e. Opsview Monitor will convert '6001Mb' to '6.0G', as below.

'Humanise values' also converts the minimum and maximum values, meaning '10000000000' becomes '10G' (Gigabytes). Even with 'Humanise..' checked, the values need to be entered in a byte format, i.e. 10000000000 for 10.0GB, 10000000 for 10MB, and so forth.

Performance Graph

This Dashlet allows Users to add a graph to their Dashlet, in a similar view and format to that within the Graph Center and within the 'Investigate Mode' in 'Host Groups, Hosts and Services':

811

To configure this Dashlet, click on the 'cog' icon in the Dashlet's header.

652

You can multi-select the Hosts, click 'Add' and the combination will be added. A maximum of 30 series can be displayed on the graph at once.

The options section contains three settings:

437
  • Duration: The range of data the graph will show.
  • Chart style: The display style, either Line, Area or Stack.
  • Line thickness: The thickness of the per-series lines, used for all three styles.

The data on the Performance Graph can be viewed by clicking on the 'up' arrow, located at the bottom of the Performance Graph Dashlet:

811

When this arrow is clicked, the drawer will load. This drawer contains the series data including hostname and Service Check:

794

You can hover over the cursor over the graph to get balloons that highlight what the metric values were at particular points in time and the legend will change to show the current value of the graph under the cursor. The balloons can be quite busy, so you can toggle it off by going to the circular graph menu in the top right and clicking on "Toggle balloon".

798

When you hover over a metric, all other metrics will be de-emphasised so you can concentrate of that particular line. If you click on a metric the graph line will be hidden - this is useful if you want to reduce the noise from that metric but still compare against multiple metrics.

You can adjust the height of the legend by dragging the bar at the top of the legend panel. You can close the panel by clicking on the close control in the middle of the bar.

You can zoom into a graph by click and dragging within the graph.

798

You can zoom out using the tool that will appear in the Dashlet's header.

798

From the circular graph menu, you can:

  • Toggle balloons - this will enable or disable the balloons over each value
  • Download as ... - to download the graph as an image, either PNG, JPG, SVG or PDF
  • Save as ... - to save the graph data as a CSV, XLS or JSON format
  • Annotate ... - to draw on top of the graph any annotations you want

Network Map

This Dashlet allows you to see the hierarchy of the Hosts within your environment by showing the dependencies between Hosts (as defined by the administrator), and draws a spider diagram outlining the relationship between Hosts, along with a status indicator for each Host:

366

In the example above, we have focused the network map on the Host 'firewall1'. This Host is connected to a router, 'Cisco2611', which subsequently connects to a 'switch3' which has four Hosts connected to it.

You can

  • move the map by clicking and dragging with the mouse, as well as zoom in and out using the scroll wheel.
  • re-position hosts inside the map by directly clicking and dragging them where you want.
  • click a specific host to enlarge the icon and highlight its relevant parent/child relationship arrows
  • click the hostname displayed beneath the icon to get to the Navigator page with that host selected.

To configure this Dashlet, click on the 'cog' icon in the Dashlet's header.

The Filter by Host group section allows you to filter the list of Hosts available within the 'Filter from Host' by a given Host Group, and also limits the network map Dashlet to only show Hosts that are within the specified Host Group.

434

The Filter from Host section allows you to select a Host of which you wish to see the expanded network map:

432

The Advanced filtering section offers further display options:

  • Only display Hosts that possess one or more children: removes the 'status' from Hosts who have no further children. With this option checked, the status (green/red/yellow) is hidden. If this option is unchecked, it displays the Host status:
  • Delete Saved positions: resets the network map on each load if you have dragged them into different positions.

Metric Pie Chart

This Dashlet allows you to create a pie chart view of the performance data gathered within Opsview Monitor for Service Checks metrics.
For example, you can compare which Hosts are using the most network bandwidth, which Hosts are using the most disk space, etc.

405

To configure this Dashlet, click on the 'cog' icon in the Dashlet's header:

430

The pie chart segments can be hovered over, which will display a tooltip containing the Host, Service Check, metric and value fields, along with the percentage of the pie chart that slice has, and a small sparkline graph displaying historical performance over the last month:

407

A 'legend' icon in the top left-hand side allows you to view a legend for any slices too small to have individual labels on the pie chart. You can also enable/disable them by clicking on them via this list to focus on the larger segments.

The 'Current Data' drop-down in the bottom left allows you to view older data in the pie chart (if available).

The data in the top right hand side will list the number of slices, and also the total data - i.e. if each slice is 'Number of connections', then the number will be total number of connections across all slices.

Host Group List

This Dashlet provides a cut-down version of the view available the Navigator page.
It allows you to view the 'Downtime', 'Host Handled', 'Host Unhandled', 'Service Handled', 'Service Handled', 'Total Hosts', and 'Total Service Checks' columns on a per Host Group basis.

404

By default, only three status columns are displayed - 'Downtime', 'Host Unhandled' and 'Service Unhandled', and all Host groups are shown.
To add or remove columns, hold the mouse cursor over the column header row, click on the contextual menu icon that appears and then select or deselect column names within the 'Edit Columns' menu:

417

The Host Group List can be sorted by clicking on the column name, or via the contextual menu icon for that column header.

To configure this Dashlet, click on the 'cog' icon in the Dashlet's header.

  • Filter by Host group: this filter the Dashlet to only display selected Host groups.
515
  • Filter by State: this filter the Dashlet to display only Hosts or Service Checks in a certain state.
513

You must select at least one Host Check state and one Service Check state, as this dashlet uses the intersection of the filters - for example, selecting 'DOWN' and 'OK' will only show DOWN hosts and then only display the OK service checks on those hosts

Host Group Tree Map

This Dashlet displays a visual representation of the health of the Service Checks within one or more Host Groups within Opsview Monitor:

403

The size of the cell is proportional to the number of Service Checks within the given Hashtag in a certain state.
To configure this Dashlet, click on the 'cog' icon in the Dashlet's header. You can then choose which Host Groups you wish to display in this particular Dashlet:

428

You can also choose to 'Filter by Status', which allows you to tell the Host Group Tree Map to only display Hosts or Service Checks that are in a certain state, i.e. OK, CRITICAL, UP, etc:

429

You can choose to 'Only show unhandled hosts and service checks', which will only display Hosts or Service Checks that are in an unhandled state, i.e. CRITICAL/WARNING/UNKNOWN or DOWN/UNREACHABLE and not acknowledged by an administrator.

Event Table

This Dashlet allows you to view the status changes in a table smaller version than the table within the 'Events Viewer' page:

407

The most recent events are at the top.
To configure this Dashlet, click on the 'cog' icon in the Dashlet's header:

439

You can choose to filter the Events Table to show events that have occurred within specific

  • Business Services
  • Business Components
  • Host Templates
  • Host Groups
  • Hashtags
  • Hosts or Service Checks
  • Filter by events based on their status
    These filters are applied using an 'AND' logic, i.e. 'Only show events within 'Host Group A', on Hosts 'B' and 'C', only within the Host Template 'Unix Base', and only show CRITICAL events, that are in a HARD state'.

In 'Filter by Limit', you can choose to restrict the number of events shown in the table via the 'Filter by Limit' drawer, which allows to display the 25, 50, 100 or 250 most recent events.

Event Graph

This Dashlet allows you to view the status changes in a graph smaller version than the table within the 'Events Viewer' page:

431

To see what the events are, click on a colored section. This displays the data in a table:

701

Unlike in the main 'Event Viewer' section within 'Monitoring', only one bar can be selected at a time.

To configure this Dashlet, click on the 'cog' icon in the Dashlet's header:

434

You can choose to filter the Events Table to show events that have occurred within specific

  • Business Services
  • Business Components
  • Host Templates
  • Host Groups
  • Hashtags
  • Hosts or Service Checks
  • Filter by events based on their status
    These filters are applied using an 'AND' logic, i.e. 'Only show events within 'Host Group A', on Hosts 'B' and 'C', only within the Host Template 'Unix Base', and only show CRITICAL events, that are in a HARD state'.

In 'Filter by Limit', you can choose to restrict the number of events shown in the table via the 'Filter by Limit' drawer, which allows to display the 25, 50, 100 or 250 most recent events.

Top Service Issues

This Dashlet allows you to choose a Service Check and view all of the Hosts that have that Service Check, in a problem state (WARNING/CRITICAL):

402

To configure this Dashlet, click on the 'cog' icon in the Dashlet's header:

434

In the configuration window, you can choose which service check to look into and determine a WARNING/CRITICAL duration threshold (in days), which will change the color of the row depending on how long that Service Check has been in a problem state, and also choose between showing the 'Top 10' or 'Top 25' Service Checks in a non-OK state.

You can also choose to define the 'Quantity of issues to display', either 'Top 10' or Top 25'.

There are also options to further filter the list, i.e. only show Hosts that have a specific service check in a non-OK state, within a certain Host Group ('Filter by Host group'), or only show Hosts that have 'Unix Load Average' in a non-OK state if that state is CRITICAL and HARD ('Filter by State'):

437

Top Services by Metric

This Dashlet is different to the 'Top Service Issues' Dashlet, in that it allows you to choose not only a Service Check but also a metric of the Service Check:

404

The other difference is that it lists all Hosts who have the specified Service Check & metric, instead of only ones who have the given Service Check in a non-OK state.

To configure this Dashlet, click on the 'cog' icon in the Dashlet's header:

431

You can also choose to define the 'Quantity of issues to display', either 'Top 10' or Top 25'.

Note Pad

This Dashlet allows you to add text via a WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to add text, notes, hyperlinks, contact phone numbers and more to a Dashboard:

402

To get to the WYSIWYG editor, click on the 'cog' icon in the Dashlet's header:

439

All Host Services

This Dashlet allows seeing an overview of Service Checks, as if you had selected a host in the Navigator page, as well as Host Checks.

405

Note: Host Check rows will not have a value inside the 'Service Check' column, and therefore will always be sorted before them alphabetically.

To configure this Dashlet, click on the 'cog' icon in the Dashlet's header:

434

You can choose to filter the table to show events that have occurred within specific:

  • Host Groups
  • Hashtag
  • Host or Service Check
  • Status

The 'Filter by Limit' section allows you to choose whether the Dashlet displays only Host Checks, Service Checks or both, and how many items to display.
When sorting the table, this limit is applied after the sorting - so if there are 100 items and you display the 'Top 10' sorting in an ascending or descending order will show the first or last 10 items of the hundred, respectively.

Flow Collectors Dashlets

If you have enabled the Flow Collectors functionality, some additional Flow Collector Dashlets are enabled.