About the Dashboard

This section provides information about the Dashboard including the type of information displayed, how to read the charts, and how you can customize the Dashboard.

Learning about the Dashboard

The charts on the Dashboard provide a visual representation of the general health and status of the appliance and managed resources in your data center. From the Dashboard, you can immediately see resources that need your attention. For direct access to resources needing your attention, click the resource name.

Each time you log in to the appliance, the Dashboard is the first screen you see. Select Dashboard from the main menu any time you want to see the Dashboard charts.

The Dashboard displays status of the most relevant resources that are associated with assigned user roles. If you are assigned multiple roles, such as Network and Storage roles, the default dashboard displays the combination of resources that each role would see on the dashboard. You can customize your Dashboard display by adding, deleting, and moving resource panels.

How to interpret the Dashboard charts

Dashboard chart colors help you to quickly interpret the reported data.

Dashboard chart colors

Color Indication
Green A healthy status
Yellow An event has occurred that might require your attention
Red A critical condition requires your immediate attention
Blue

For a status graph, the resource instances that match the data being measured (a solid blue chart indicates 100%)

For custom graphs, there may be different shades of blue, each representing a different value for an attribute.

Light gray The resource instances that do not match the data being measured (used in combination with blue to total 100%)
Dark gray Resource instances reporting status other than OK, Warning, or Critical, that is, they are Disabled or Unknown

Status icons

To assist you in identifying resources that are not in a healthy state, status icons indicate the number of resources with a status of OK (), Warning (), or Critical ().

You can select a status icon to view the resource’s main screen, with resource instances filtered by that status or click on the donut slice of the same color. If no resources are defined or if no resource instances are detected with a particular status (indicated by the number zero), the associated icon is nearly colorless (very pale gray).

To learn how to interpret the data displayed on the charts, see the numbered descriptions that appear after the figure.

Dashboard sample

Sample Dashboard

1

Click a resource name to view the resource’s main screen for more information. The adjacent number identifies how many instances of that resource are being managed by the appliance. In this example, one enclosure has been added to the appliance, and it is in a healthy status.

2

When you hover your pointer over a dashboard panel, additional icons appear as shown on the Enclosures panel.

  • The remove or delete (x) icon removes the panel from the dashboard.

  • The move () cursor allows you to move the panel to a different position on the dashboard.

  • For custom panels, the edit () icon also appears, which allows you to edit a custom panel.

3

The sample chart for the Interconnects resource shows a total of six interconnects of which two are in a Critical state and the other four are reporting a healthy status.

Click the Critical status icon to open the Interconnects screen to begin investigating the cause.

4

On a Status chart, a dark-gray slice represents the count of resources that are not reporting status information because the resource is disabled or the status is not known.

The sample chart for the Server Hardware resource shows a total of 14 instances of server hardware, of which 11 are either disabled or are unknown devices. Hover your pointer over the dark-gray chart slice to see a count of server hardware instances with a Disabled and Unknown status.

5

The icon enables you to customize your dashboard by adding custom or pre-defined panels. See Customizing the dashboard to learn more about customizing panels.

6

The Ethernet Networks chart illustrates a customized panel where a user has defined the number of Ethernet networks assigned to that user. For more examples, see Customizing the dashboard.

7

The Storage Pools chart reports the state of storage pools that are being managed by the appliance, if any.

See About storage pools to learn more about storage pools.

8

The Appliance Alerts area summarizes important appliance-related alerts, typically about back up and licensing issues. Alerts related to other resources are not included here.

If one appliance alert is detected, the alert text appears here. For multiple alerts, the number of alerts are shown, and you can click Appliance to go directly to the Activity screen for a filtered view of all appliance-related alerts.

See About Activity to learn more about alerts.

Customizing the dashboard

You can customize the dashboard to show panels that interest you.


[NOTE: ]

NOTE: If you want to clear any dashboard customizations and restore the dashboard to the default, see Reset the dashboard.


Using dashboard queries to create a custom panel

Dashboard queries are used to filter resources to create a custom panel in the dashboard with results that interest you. The general structure of queries is name:value format. You can string queries together to further filter your selection. For example, to show locked alerts created in the last 7 days, use the query format: created:<7d state:Active state:Locked as shown in the following figure.

Custom panel using query created:<7d state:Active state:Locked

Custom panel using query created:<7d state:Active state:Locked

Example dashboard queries

Selected resource

Example query syntax

Search results

All

created:<7d state:Active State:Locked

All alerts in a locked status in the past seven days

All

labels:yourname

All resources labeled with yourname

Alerts

owner:yourname

All alerts assigned to yourname

Server hardware

model:"ProLiant BL460c Gen8"

model:"ProLiant BL465c Gen8"

All servers by model

Server profile

created:<7d

All server profiles created in the last 7 days

For more information on queries, see Advanced searching and filtering with properties.

Creating chart slices for your custom panel

You can create your own slices of data for your charts. You can label the slices and create queries for those slices as shown in the following figure.

Creating chart slices

Creating chart slices

1

Custom panel title

2

Caption

3

First chart slice label — When you hover your pointer over this slice in the chart, the number and the label name appear in the center. The second and third chart slices are shown in a lighter blue.

4

Other label — When you hover your pointer over the “other” slice in the chart, the number and other label name appear in the center.

See also