Using BMC Helix Dashboards

BMC Helix Dashboards is a SaaS service that provides the ability to create interactive dashboards for BMC Helix Continuous Optimization data. You can customize the dashboards in multiple ways to gain valuable insights into your system. BMC Helix Dashboards enhance the set of analysis supported by BMC Helix Continuous Optimization by providing additional customization capabilities for graphical representation.

BMC Helix Dashboards offer unified reporting that gives you a consolidated view of data from the integrated products, such as BMC Helix Continuous Optimization and BMC Helix Operations Management. You can create dashboards that source data from applications across your environment. You can easily export and share dashboards with users within or outside your environment. You can also use template variables to reuse dashboard panels. For more information about the dashboards, see the BMC Helix Dashboards documentation.

To create custom dashboards for BMC Helix Continuous Optimization in BMC Helix Dashboards

For BMC Helix Continuous Optimization, you can configure custom dashboards, panels, and queries to quickly start creating visualizations to get an insight of your IT infrastructure. As a tenant administrator or an editor, you need to build queries in panels in BMC Helix Dashboards to fetch data from the data source. You can build multiple queries with different query types in a panel. However, you cannot change the data source for each query in a panel. If you want to change the data source, you must create a new panel. You can also select a visualization type for the panel.

Log in to BMC Helix Portal as a capacity planner.
Note: Ensure that the Editor role is assigned to the capacity planner user.
Click the BMC Helix Dashboards tile.
On the left navigation pane, do one of the following actions:
- Hover the mouse over the Create icon and then click Dashboard.
- Hover the mouse over the Dashboards icon , click Browse, and then click the New Dashboard button.
On the New dashboard page, click Add new panel.
In the Query section, select the BMC Helix data source for the query.
In the Query Type field, select one of the following query types to fetch the relevant BMC Helix Continuous Optimization data:
In the Query field, add the query. This field changes according to the query type that you select.
(optional) To add an additional query, click + Query, and specify the query options as described in the previous step.
Select the required visualization type.
Enter a name for the dashboard, select a folder, and click Save. The new dashboard is displayed with the relevant data.

To visualize the Continuous Optimization data based on metrics

Use the Metric query type to fetch the performance metrics data in your environment.

Add a new panel and select Query Type as Metrics.
Configure the following parameters, and save the query:

Field	Description
Query type	Select the query type as Metric.
Source	Select the source as Optimize.
Metrics browser	Type a metric query to this field or expand metric browser to build basic queries using required metrics and labels. As you type your query, you will receive label suggestions based on the available metrics. The following video explains how to use the metrics browser to build a basic query. Following is a list of some of the labels that you can use for BMC Helix Continuous Optimization: metric (string): VictoriaMetric metric name using the label as "__name__". entid (number): Identifier of the entity, such as sysid, wkldid, and appid. entname (string): Name of the entity. It could vary over time. enttype (string): Entity type, such as system, application, or business driver types. You can use the entity prefix in the query. For example, to extract data for Virtual Cluster - VMware entity type, use the enttype as sys:vh:vmw. For information on all entity types supported in BMC Helix Continuous Optimization, see Entity-types. resname (string): Label for the monitored resource. For example, filesystem "/root", disk "sda", interface "eth0". restype (string): Type of the resource defined in the resname label. For example storage:filesystem, storage:disk, network:interface. resid (uuid, string): UUID of the resource. source (string): Use when multiple sources load the same metric without overwriting each other samples possible values. "opt:meas": measured generic "opt:meas:vn": virtual node "opt:der": derived series "opt:mod": model "opt:ind": indicator inputstat (string): Statistic used for the metric, such as avg, min, max, and value. For examples of the metric query type, see Examples.
Legend	Add a legend to appear in the panel. You can use a variable here. For example, the value of the {~code language="none"}}hostname{{/code} variable is replaced with the host name in the panel.
Min step	Add a threshold for a lower limit of the Prometheus query. This setting is absolute, and cannot be changed by the value in the Resolution field.
Resolution	Sets the parameter for each pixel to correspond to one data point of a Prometheus range query. Use lower resolutions for better performance. For more information, see Prometheus data source.
Format	Select one of the following formats for the panel: Time Series Table Heatmap
Instant	Use this toggle button to return only the latest value for the requested time series. Instant queries return results faster than the normal range queries.

Examples of the Metric query type

Here are a few examples of the Metric query type:

Use case	Queries	Visualization type
View the memory utilization details for the Kubernetes cluster.	MEM_UTIL{enttype="sys:kubernetes:cluster", entname="$Cluster"} * 100	Gauge

View the pod usage within the Kubernetes cluster.	(SUM(KPOD_NUM{entname="$Cluster"})/ SUM(KPOD_NUM_MAX{entname="$Cluster"}))*100	Gauge

View the CPU and memory utilization details for Kubernetes nodes.	(CPU_UTIL{enttype="sys:kubernetes:node"}) (MEM_UTIL{enttype="sys:kubernetes:node"})	Table

View the CPU usage trend for the Kubernetes cluster.	CPU_USED_NUM{enttype="sys:kubernetes:cluster", entname="$Cluster"} CPU_LIMIT{enttype="sys:kubernetes:cluster", entname="$Cluster"} CPU_REQUEST{enttype="sys:kubernetes:cluster", entname="$Cluster"} CPU_NUM{enttype="sys:kubernetes:cluster", entname="$Cluster"}	Time series

To visualize the Continuous Optimization data based on data marts

Use the Optimize Data marts query type to fetch the capacity data in BMC Helix Continuous Optimization.

Add a new panel and select Query Type as Optimize Data marts.
Configure the following parameters, and save the query:

To get insights into the overall health and status of the business services

Without insights into the risk and efficiency of business services, the assurance of your business services can be disrupted. As a service owner, use the Service Risk and Mitigation query type and visualization plug-in to get the insights into the overall health and status of the business services and view the prediction data on a dashboard.

Resources (CPU, memory, and storage) at the pool level in a business service are correlated with the business driver metrics. This correlation is used to forecast growth by evaluating the projection of the utilization metrics. For details, see Business-services-applications-business-drivers-and-service-pools and Analyzing-business-services.

After creating a custom dashboard by using the Service Risk and Mitigation query type and visualization plug-in, the chart displays if the business driver growth is limited by one of these resources, as they are correlated. This information can help to mitigate any risks associated with your business service. For details about the plugin, see Task 3: To visualize the business service risk and mitigation data.

Important

If business drivers and resources in a business service are not correlated, that business service is not displayed in BMC Helix Dashboards.

Task 1: To fetch the business service data

Use the Service Risk and Mitigation query type to fetch the business service data from BMC Helix Continuous Optimization.

Add a new panel and select Query Type as Service Risk and Mitigation.
Configure the following parameters, and save the query:

(Optional) Task 2: To configure additional business services panels by using variables

Configure additional business services panel by using query in a variable for custom dashboards. To create a variable for business services, do the following:

On a dashboard, click Dashboard settings .
On the navigation bar, click Variables.
Click Add new variable and specify the following values:
1. Name: Name of the variable. For example, BS.
2. Type: Query
3. Label: Label that will be displayed as a filter in the dashboard. For example, Business Services.
4. Hide: Variable
5. Data source: BMC Helix
6. Query: bs-risk-and-mitigation,bs
7. Refresh: On dashboard load
8. Sort: Disabled
  You can see the list of available business services under Preview of values.
Select relevant Selection options and click Update. The new variable is created and ready to use in a query.
For more information about variables, see Setting up variables for dashboard queries, filtering data, and panel title values.

The following video displays the example on how to create a variable to configure additional business services:

Task 3: To visualize the business service risk and mitigation data

Use the BMC Service Risk and Mitigation visualization plug-in to visualize the business service performance based on the correlation between business drivers and resources of a pool on a dashboard. Service owners can use this information to get insights into the overall health and status of business services in BMC Helix Dashboards.

The dashboard includes a single chart for a business service and displays the following details:

Separate series for each resources (CPU, memory and storage) based on their correlation with the business driver in that business service. For example, if the business driver is correlated with only CPU and memory, two series each for CPU and memory are displayed. Each series displays the historical data and the prediction data based on the default time period in the What-if simulation of this business service. For details, see Creating-a-What-if-simulation-for-business-services-and-viewing-the-simulation-results. This helps to identify a critical resource causing the risk to the business service.
In case of a resource saturation, the day when the business service will be at risk.
Risk indicator: An indication that CPU, memory, or storage resource of a pool in a business service is either already saturated or will soon be experiencing capacity contention. The color-coded icons represent the level of risk for business services: green for healthy, orange for medium risk, and red for high risk business services.

Days to Risk indicator: Indicates the estimated number of days before the CPU, memory, and storage resources achieve the configured threshold. No risk is displayed for healthy business services.

Important

If you are using a variable for a business service when building a query, make sure to configure the Repeat options in the plug-in. Select the variable used for the business service in the Repeat by variable box and select the required values in Repeat direction and Max per row.

Visualizing the time series data of BMC Helix Continuous Optimization

You can use the BMC Time Series Forecast visualization plug-in to view the predictive data of BMC Helix Continuous Optimization on a dashboard. The dashboard includes a line chart that shows the prediction data from data sources, such as BMC Helix Continuous Optimization and confidence bands. You can select a period of prediction and show or hide the confidence bands.

Example: View the predictive server operations data

A tenant administrator can view the forecast of the back-end operations for the next 2 months by using the BMC Time Series Forecast visualization plug-in:

For information about how to configure this plug-in, see Visualizing predictive time series data in panels.

Cross-launch from BMC Helix Continuous Optimization to BMC Helix Dashboards

With the integration of BMC Helix Continuous Optimization with BMC Helix Dashboards, you can navigate to BMC Helix Dashboards by using the cross-launch option from the Views section of BMC Helix Continuous Optimization. The cross-launch option is available on the details page of the systems that are monitored by the PATROL Agent. You can view the device metrics data in BMC Helix Dashboards with this feature. This option is not available for systems that are not monitored by PATROL Agent.

To view the option for your devices in BMC Helix Continuous Optimization, ensure that BMC Helix Operations Management, BMC Helix Dashboards, and BMC Helix Discovery are available on the same tenant. Ensure that you have the permissions to view the device metric details in BMC Helix Dashboards.