Content creators are responsible for creating, configuring, and managing dashboards. They also define the data sources that feed information to dashboards, define metric thresholds, and create application models.

Dashboards are comprised of panels and elements that display the necessary information for monitoring status and performance.

A dashboard is made up of panels. Each panel is a floating, arrangeable window that contains a particular type of element: LEDs, gauges, graphs, and so on. You can group these elements in a meaningful way. (See Content Creators: About Group Elements.) Additionally, panels include options for defining the display and sorting of elements.

All the settings related to a panel, and how it displays data, can be found in the Panel Configuration dialog box. The changes you make with the Panel Configuration dialog box affect all the elements in the panel. You can configure these settings:

By default, data-error notification for elements is disabled. However, you can enable the notification by specifying a threshold value, as described in Setting notification threshold for a panel.

By default, the Data Error Notification Threshold (%) option is disabled with a value of 101.

To set the notification threshold for all panels in a dashboard:

Elements display metric data (such as CPU utilization, memory utilization, or interface throughput) for a given object or group of objects. Your choice of element depends on the particular metrics that you want to monitor, as well as the best way to view the data. For more information about choosing the appropriate element, see Guidelines for choosing elements.

Right-click an element to access options. Depending on the element, those options include:

Each element comes with its own set of attributes. To access the attributes, right-click the element and choose Edit > Settings.

When creating dashboards, you must decide what data is appropriate for the task. The elements that you choose determines how the data is displayed. This table lists guidelines for selecting appropriate elements.

A group is a collection of multiple elements under a single element. The members of a group can include metrics and other groups, all of which are found in one or more lower levels in the group hierarchy. To get to a particular metric from a group, you must drill down through any associated grouped members in the hierarchy. See Content Creators: About Group Elements.

For a description of elements, see:

To change the object name of an element, see Changing names of elements (objects)

Gauges, both half and full, and sliders show a metric’s value, observed range, and expected range. Gauges and sliders are useful for confirming that a metric is within normal limits, as well as showing how close a metric’s current value is to its warning (yellow) or critical (red) limits.

Additionally, from the same Dashboard Panel Settings dialog box, you can configure the range shown on the gauge or slider by specifying minimum and maximum values. For example, you can specify the values of Gauge Minimum and Gauge Maximum to be 0 and 100 respectively. Alternatively, you can accept the default setting of auto for both the minimum and maximum values. An auto value for Gauge Minimum, with a default setting of 0, will reset itself to reflect metric values dropping below 0. Likewise, an auto value for Gauge Maximum, with a default setting of 100, will reset itself to reflect metric values exceeding 100.

Graphs display the change of a metric over time. For example, you can use a graph to show throughput for the last 15 minutes in one-minute increments. There are three styles of available graphs: line graph, area graph, and bar chart.

To change the style of a graph, right-click the element and choose Edit > Settings. Then, from Graph Settings, select the Graph Style drop-down menu and select Line Graph, Area Graph, or Bar Chart. (If you select Line Graph or Area Graph, select the Stepline option to connect data points with horizontal and vertical lines.)

For threshold visualization options, see About threshold status and settings visualization in graph elements.

Grouped graphs can show average, sum, maximum and minimum values, as well as multiple traces on a single axis (for a Line Graph). For more information, see Grouping elements.

For graphs (area graphs and line graphs), including those with multiple traces, you can show overlaid historical data for a particular metric. This feature is useful for visually comparing a metric with its historical values. As shown in the following figure, a dashed gray line presents the historical data.

With this feature, using the Historical Comparison Row visualization style, you can view the current value for a particular metric and the change from a previous time period. The following figure shows a panel using the Historical Comparison Row visualization style. Additionally, you can double-click a row to display a graph with a comparison line.

The following procedure describes how to create a panel that displays textual historical comparison data. Additionally, the procedure describes how to define the order of the rows.

These visualization options are available:

These historical time range options are available:

You can display time aggregation numerical values (summary information) in a graph. This capability enables you to select, then see at a glance, whatever summary information you deem important for a particular graph. The summary information displays as text in the upper-right corner of the graph, as well as in the tooltip when you mouse over the legend.

For more information on the time aggregation numerical rules used to display values, see About time aggregation rules.

LEDs show status with the use of color:

Choose LEDs when you want to present a single status in a minimum amount of space.

LEDs are particularly useful for overviews of grouped elements. For example:

An LED Series shows status over a time range. This element is particularly useful for displaying the status of intermittent problems. For example, you can use an LED Series to answer these questions:

LED Series elements also support visual correlation of multiple metrics, so you can easily identify periods of violations.

The Compact Row element shows multiple aspects of a single metric in a compact area. For example, you can show the metric name, LED Series, numerical value, and status LED for each row of a displayed metric. Doing so enables you to quickly identify violations and to determine the period when the violations occurred.

The following figure shows a panel with example Compact Row elements.

In the example (above), the Compact Row style employs these column selections (for each row):

     <Metric Name>    <Spark Line>    <Displayed Value (Text)>    <Displayed Status (LED)>

However, there are multiple element types from which you can select for each column. You can also change the order of the columns, as well as add (or delete) columns.

After the Compact Row element is configured, you can then select the element when defining the visualization style for a panel.

A Compact Row can include these columns:

To improve readability of compact row data, you can align the compact rows for all panels in a dashboard. For example, you can change the horizontal (pixel) spacing of a compact row’s name and value columns, as well as the vertical (pixel) spacing between compact rows.

If you prefer to display object names for the elements in the panel, you may want to display more meaningful names than the original object names, which sometimes can be too long.

You control how elements in a panel are displayed by defining visualization styles or by using content templates with preconfigured settings, which can include visualization styles.

Use content templates when you want to quickly create a panel or element to monitor a specific set of metrics associated with objects of a given type. You can choose from among a set of predefined content templates, or you can create your own. Each content template is designed for a specific purpose, and named accordingly.

For example, you might have a content template defined for objects of type Monitored Application, called App Metrics, which specifies Activity Score and Server Time (ms). The visualization style, already defined in the content template, determines the way that data displays when drilling down into an element created for that template, as shown in the following figure.

When you create elements with the Object Selection Wizard, you must first specify the metrics for the objects that you want to monitor. In the Object Selection Wizard, you can either specify the metrics directly or you can choose a content template that already specifies these metrics. The content template that you select can be predefined or one that you created.

In the Object Selection Wizard, available content templates are listed on the Contents Templates tab of the Select Metrics panel. For any given object type, there may be one or more content templates (or there may be none).

For example, suppose you want to monitor metrics on objects of type CPU. In the Object Selection Wizard, you select CPU objects. Templates defined for the CPU object type appear in the Content Templates tab (on the Select Metrics panel). You can then select a template. The following figure shows a content template called CPU Metrics and its associated metrics.

For more information, see Object Selection Wizard.

You can use content templates to create element hierarchies. In addition to specifying the metrics that you want to monitor, content templates can also group the metrics into hierarchies based on nested content templates and object types. These hierarchies are then represented as grouped elements in the panel, as shown in the following example.

Content template grouping settings include:

For more information on groups, see Content Creators: About Group Elements.

You can define the options that are available in an element’s right-click menu, or drill-down, so that you can:

The following figure shows an element’s drill-down options for defined dashboards and web pages. The Launch External Web Page option is selected and displays the option to launch the Riverbed web site.

Drill-down options can be defined at different levels, depending on your requirements. Options are inherited by lower levels. The levels, starting from the top, are:

When defining a URL drill-down option, you can specify a variable that will be replaced by the element’s corresponding value. Variables are specified using this syntax:

You can use any object property name as a variable. For example, to use the IP Address object property as a variable, you specify $$IP Address$$. In addition to object properties, you can specify the special variables listed in this table.