Creating a summary data mart for a custom view

Create a summary data mart to collect the time series data for a specified period. This data is aggregated hourly to a single data point. Using the Summary Data Mart wizard, you can build a custom data mart to retrieve this data according to your requirements. It is a simple, easy-to-use wizard that allows you to create data marts using the required metrics without having the knowledge of SQLs. To understand the concept of data marts, how they can be useful, and for information about creating SQL-based data marts using summary data marts, see Managing-data-marts.

The Summary Data Mart wizard guides you through the creation of a data mart:

• Select the type of content to be displayed by the data mart
• Select the primary entity of the data mart or use the entity filter
• Select the required metrics
• (Optional) Select the tag types to be included in the data mart
• (Optional) Include the parent entity details
• Configure the time filter to be displayed 

For example, using the Summary Data Mart wizard, you can create a data mart that retrieves all virtual machines with their hosts and clusters deployed in your infrastructure. You can include capacity metrics, such as CPU, memory, and storage utilization, to get an idea of the status of the infrastructure capacity. You can also add a time filter to check the data utilization for a specific period. 

You can add, edit, or delete a summary data mart only if your user role is assigned to the admin_section_edit and data_mart_edit permission. For more information, see Default-user-roles-and-permissions.

To create a summary data mart

The following video (4:52) illustrates the process of creating a summary data mart.

 https://youtu.be/4CfqCC58ngI

1. In the navigation pane of the , select Views > Custom Views.
2. Access any custom view, click , and select Add Summary Data Mart. The Summary Data Mart wizard is displayed in a new page. 
   Alternatively, you can click Add Data Mart while creating a custom view using the Summary table template.
   
   

3. Select the type of content that you want to extract using this data mart, and click Next. By default, System is selected.

   Based on this selection, the system types, business driver types, or domains are displayed in the next step.
    

4. Select the entity type or use an appropriate entity filter for the entity whose data you want to retrieve by using this data mart, and click Next. For example, to retrieve all VMware virtual machine data, select entity type as Virtual Machine - VMware. Corresponding to the selected entity type or entity filter, a list of metrics is filtered in the Metrics page. If you select multiple entity types, metrics corresponding to all entity types are displayed.
   Select the appropriate entity filter, and click Next. You can refine entities using one of the following options:
   • Select the entity type: Select the entity type from the list of available entity types. After you select the entity type, you can decide whether to include or exclude entities with all statuses or with the selected status, such as Active entities only.
     By default, all statuses except Dismissed are selected. This option is useful when you want to exclude certain entities that are no longer useful, such as dismissed entities. 
     For details on the entity status, see Lifecycle-and-status-of-entities-and-domains.
   • Use an entity filter: Displays a list of predefined entity filters that you can select from. For details, see Managing-entity-filters.
     
     
      

5. Select the required metrics on which to measure the capacity of the selected entity type and the metadata information, and click Next.

   • Select entity metrics: Select the metrics from the list of available metrics.
     For example, to review the CPU and memory utilization of virtual machines, select CPU_UTIL and MEM_UTIL metrics.
     You can select the List the metrics from all Entity Types option to display all metrics irrespective of the entity types selected in the Entity Filter page.
     The metrics list also displays the subresource (BY_**) metrics and formulas. When you select any of the BY_** metrics, its name is automatically added to the summary data mart. 
     Considerations while selecting storage subresources in data marts

     Storage subresource can be based on file systems (Linux) or logical disks (Windows). When you select either file systems or logical disks subresources metrics, the summary data mart contains data for the selected metric only. However, when you include the IND_DAYS_TO_SATURATION (DTS) metric in this scenario, the summary data mart contains DTS data for both file systems and logical disks.

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   • (Optional) Select metadata information: Select the appropriate options to include metadata information of the entity for the selected entity type. The selected options are added as columns in the data mart.

     Option	Data mart column name	Description
     Entity status	ENTSTATUS	Status of the entity. The following values are displayed for the ENTSTATUS column:  Active Unassigned Newly discovered Dismissed Active Derived
     Activity date	ENTLASTACTIVITY	Last activity date of the entity
     Entity insert ts	ENTINSERTTS	Timestamp depicting the insertion time of the entity
     Entity update ts	ENTUPDATETS	Timestamp depicting the update time of the entity metadata

6. (Optional) In the Select Tag Types list, select one or more tag types that are defined for the selected entity types. To view the tag types defined for all the entity types, select the List all the Tag Types from all Entity Types check box. The tags of the selected types that are associated with the entities are added to a data mart column. 
    
7. (Optional) Select the parent entity from the list. When selected, the name, description, and identifier of the selected parent entity are included in the data mart. The list displays all the parent entities of the selected entity. For example, if you have selected the entity as Virtual Machine, the parent entity list displays Virtual Host, Virtual Cluster, Resource Pool, and Datastore. You can select multiple parent entities and also include the metrics of these entities. 
   
   
    
8. Select the time filter on which the data will be summarized in the view. For details on time filters and configuring the global time filter, see Managing-time-filters.
   You can select the time filter from the following available options:
   • Global Time Filter: Displays a list of predefined time ranges that you can select from. For example, Last 180 days, Last 30 days, and so on. 
   • Last 1 day / 7 days/ 30 days: Displays data for either the last 1 day, 7 days, or 30 days excluding the current day.
   • Last complete 1 month / 3 months: Displays data for the last complete 1 month or 3 months. For example, if you are checking the data in the associated custom view on September 15, data from August 1 to 31 (for 1 month) or from June 1 to August 31 (for 3 months) is displayed in the view.
   • Last time period: Allows you to define a custom time period. The data will be displayed according to this custom period. For example, you can select 36 hours to display last 36 hours of data in the view.
   • Date range: Allows you to define a custom time range. Use the calendar to select the start and end dates for your custom time period. 
9. Specify a name and an optional description for your data mart, and click Next. 

10. The summary page contains editors that enable you to manipulate data. By default, the Basic Editor is displayed. The Advanced Editor is a JSON editor that includes the same values as the Basic Editor but in JSON format. For details on the Advanced Editor, see Using the Advanced Editor of the Summary Data Mart Wizard.
    The basic editor consists of the following fields: 
    

    1	Data Mart Definition	Displays the preview of all options selected in the previous pages. You can choose to modify these values by clicking Back to Wizard.
    2	Editor toggle	Use the toggle button to switch between the basic and advanced editors.
    3	Materialization Task	Displays the default materialization task of the data mart. If required, you can select another materialization task to change the frequency of materialization of the data mart in the associated view. For details on configuring the materializer task, see Configuring-the-Data-Mart-Materializer-task.
    4	Summary table	A table listing the data mart columns based on your selections in the Summary Data Mart wizard. These columns will be displayed in the summary table of the associated view. The table provides the default values of labels, descriptions, and statistics for the columns. It also displays the metrics for parent entities if you have configured the parent entity.  The following statistics are available for an ID, string, configuration, and performance metric in the basic editor. For details on the statistics available in the advanced editor, see Using the advanced editor of the summary data mart wizard. ID and string: Value Configuration metric: Last value, Maximum, Minimum Performance metric: Average, Count, Count Error, Count Good, Count Poor, Count Warn, Duration, Last Value, Maximum, Minimum, Percentile 5, Percentile 10,  Percentile 25, Percentile 50, Percentile 75, Percentile 90, Percentile 95, Percentile 99, Slope, Standard Deviation, Sum
    5	Actions	You can edit the column values or delete columns by clicking the respective actions from the Action menu. To delete multiple columns, select the respective columns, and click Delete Selected. You can not delete the default system columns.
    6	Search	Specify the value that you want to search for in the table.
    7	Pagination	Displays the first 15 search results by default. You can navigate through the pages to see the results.

11. Click Finish. The message indicating that the data mart is created successfully, along with the data mart identifier, is displayed. 
    The new data mart is added to the Data marts page. For details, see Managing-data-marts.
     

You can now use this data mart while creating a custom view.