Monitoring services with charts

If a cloud administrator has enabled monitoring for a service, either as a default behavior for the service or as an option you select as part of your service instance, you can view charts that show detailed information about the health of your provisioned servers of that service. This topic contains the following sections:

• • Charts display
  • Data for resource sets and individual servers
  • Configuring charts
  • How data is collected for charts
  • Adding a chart to a service
  • Viewing granular data in a chart
  • Editing a chart
  • Moving a chart
  • Related topics

Charts display

For VMware services, the System CPU Utilization and System Memory Utilization line charts are displayed by default. For Amazon services, the System CPU Utilization line chart is displayed by default.

Default service monitoring charts

You can add charts to monitor other aspects of a service. Charts you select for a service are applied to all of your provisioned instances of that service. Charts selected by a different user apply to that user's provisioned instances of the service. The full list of available chart types includes:.

Data for resource sets and individual servers

If a service has multiple servers in a server group, you can see the aggregate data for all servers in that server group by clicking the Information icon  next to the name of the server group. The data opens in a new dialog box, as shown in the following figure:

Aggregate data for servers in a server group

When you click the View Service Health Charts icon from the My Services list, charts for the first resource set of the selected service are displayed, providing more detailed aggregate information for the servers in that resource set. The data in the resource-set charts is used for the thresholds monitored by service monitoring policies. If a chart type has an associated policy defined, the threshold for that policy is shown on the chart as a grey line. See Creating-service-monitoring-policies for more information about monitoring policies and rule thresholds.

In the Charts display you can click specific servers of the resource set to show charts that apply specifically to the server you selected.

Configuring charts

You can configure the way a chart appears and performs using the icons available in the chart, as detailed in the following table:

How data is collected for charts

When adding or editing a chart you can determine two key aspects for the data displayed: a specified time period for the data (the scope of the chart) and the polling interval for retrieving data (the number of data points used to populate the chart). A more frequent interval can provide a more granular view of the performance of a service. Note that server performance data is collected at a minimum interval defined by the cloud administrator as part of a monitoring level. The polling intervals available for you to select are multiples of the monitoring level interval defined by the cloud administrator.

The Average, Min, and Max measurements in your charts represent the average, minimum, and maximum values available in the cache of data. For example, if your monitoring level has a 5-minute interval defined, the Average value in your chart will show data points that are the average of all of the data available within that 5-minute interval in the cache.

Adding a chart to a service

To reduce the impact on system performance, and to streamline the chart display you should select only those charts that are relevant to the data you need to monitor. For example, consider the following scenarios:

• If you want to monitor the operational state of a system on an ongoing basis, you might use the default CPU Utilization and Memory Utilization charts. If you have an application that has a high occurrence of IO, you might add a Disk Throughput chart. Because historical data is more relevant for the overall operational state than live data, you might configure charts to show data collected over the previous day, and at longer polling intervals.
• If you want to track data for the purpose of policy-driven actions, you would select a polling interval that matches the threshold selected in your monitoring rule. (See Creating-service-monitoring-policies for more information.) If you create these types of charts, consider using them on a short-term basis to call your attention to recurring performance issues. When the issues have been resolved, you might no longer need the chart.
• You might need a chart for policy-driven activity and another chart showing the same type of data for monitoring the operational state of a system. For example, while you might use the default CPU Utilization chart for monitoring the operational state on an ongoing basis, and a second CPU Utilization chart that is set to poll for data every 15 minutes, matching the threshold value of 15 minutes set in a corresponding monitoring rule.
• You could use charts for temporary troubleshooting purposes. For example, you might create multiple Memory Utilization charts, each with a different granularity of data, to have a better view of a server's memory utilization performance over time. When the issue has been resolved, you would delete the extra charts.

To add a chart to a service:

1. On either the Services link bar or the Servers link bar of the My Services tab, click the View Service Health Charts icon .
   Service monitoring charts for the selected service are displayed.
2. On the Charts display, click Add Chart.
   The Add a New Chart dialog box opens.
   
3. Select a metric for the chart you want to add.

4. In the View data for past field, select the window of time for the data displayed in the chart.
   For example, if you select 1 day, the chart is populated from the most recent 24-hour collection of data.

   Note

   If you select 1 hour, the Select interval for data points field is set to Actual Value, the interval for which is predetermined by the cloud administrator.

5. In the Select interval for data points field, select a polling interval for the data displayed in the chart.
6. Click OK.
   The chart is added to the Charts display.

Viewing granular data in a chart

1. (optional) In a chart, click the Zoom In icon .
   A large version of the chart opens.
   
2. Click and drag along the timeline at the bottom of the chart to select a window of time on which to zoom in.
   A grey box highlights the time period on which you will zoom in.
   
3. Release the mouse button to zoom in.
   The large chart updates to show data only for the time you selected, with individual data points plotted on the chart. If a data point has exceeded a policy threshold, the data point appears in red.
4. If necessary, repeat steps 2 and 3 to zoom in again.
5. To view more granular data for a particular data point, hover the mouse pointer over a data point to display a gauge with the date, time, and exact value.
   
6. To return to the original display, click once in the timeline.
7. If you were viewing a large chart, click the X icon to return to the Charts display.

Editing a chart

1. In a chart, click the Edit icon .
   The Edit Chart dialog box opens.
2. Select values for the View data for past and Select interval for data points fields.
3. Click OK.
   The chart is updated on the Charts display.

Moving a chart

In the Charts display, charts are arranged in rows across three columns. To move a chart, click in the area next to a chart's configuration buttons and drag it to a dashed rectangle elsewhere in the display, as shown in the following image:

Related topics

Creating-service-monitoring-policies
Viewing-service-monitoring-activities
Creating-copying-or-editing-a-service-blueprint