A metrics dashboard gives you visual representations of the numerical measurements for a cloud service. It shows you how a service is performing, such as how much capacity it uses or how much work they handle over time. Dashboards make it easy to spot trends, compare current behavior with past patterns, and quickly see when something isn't operating as expected.

Centralized vs. entity-level dashboards

Centralized dashboards aggregate metrics data across multiple entities of the same service type and present them in a unified view. They help you compare performance across resources, spot patterns, and understand overall service behavior. To access centralized dashboards in Cloud Manager, go to Monitor > Metrics.

Entity-level dashboards focuses on detailed metrics for a single entity within a service, such as one specific database cluster or one specific Linode. These dashboards help you to understand that entity's individual performance and behavior. To access an entity-level dashboard, open the Metrics tab on an entity's details page.

When used together, centralized and entity-level dashboards provide both a high-level view of a service, and deeper insights into how individual entities are performing.

Dashboard components

Dashboards are organized into two main sections. Use the settings in the first section to define the metrics data you want to view by setting the time range, selecting filters, and applying options such as Group By to visually split data into separate time series based on dimension values. Once you've applied your filters, you'll see the resulting metrics in a series of widgets in the section below.

Dashboard

Select the dashboard you wish to view from the dropdown list. Dashboards are organized by service. A service can have multiple dashboards, each highlighting a different aspect of the service's behavior. Each dashboard groups together a set of widgets focused on a specific type of information—performance, resource usage, and so on.

Start and end date

Set a start date and end date to define the period for which metrics data should be queried and displayed. When you click a date field, the date-time picker opens, showing a calendar and optional preset ranges such as "Last hour" or "Last 30 days". You can query up to 31 days of data at a time. The dashboard automatically aggregates metric data at an appropriate granularity based on the selected time range.

Filters

Use filters to narrow down the list of available entities. The filters available depend on the service associated with the dashboard. From the filtered list of entities, you can select up to 10 entities for visualization.

Global Group By

Use Global Group By to visually split data into separate time series lines based on selected dimension values. When applied, the Global Group By setting affects all widgets on the dashboard, so only dimensions supported by every widget can be selected. If you select multiple dimensions, data will be split according to those dimensions in the order selected. Widget-level groupings can be applied on top of the global grouping.

To access Global Group by options, click the Global Group By icon next to the Refresh icon, beside End Date.

Widgets

Each widget contains metrics data along with visual and numerical components that illustrate how the data behaves over time. The number of widgets and the type of metrics shown depend on the service associated with the dashboard.

Widgets include the following components:

• Graph. The graph visualizes a metric over time, making it easy to identify trends, spikes, and patterns.

• Table. The table shows key summary values for the selected time range, including maximum, average, and last observed values.

• Aggregation interval. Select the preferred aggregation interval from the dropdown list.

  

  Data can be aggregated at intervals of 1 minute, 5 minutes, 1 hour, or 1 day. When set to Auto, the dashboard determines the aggregation interval bases on the selected time range. The time range maps to the following granularities:

  Time range	Granularity
  Less than 24 hours	1 minute
  24 hours to 7 days	5 minutes
  more than 7 days	1 hour

• Aggregation function dropdown list. Choose how metrics values are aggregated, such as sum, maximum, minimum, or average.

  
  

For more information about the metrics and dimensions available for each service, see the reference guides .

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You can change the width of the widget from 50% to 100%, or from 100% to 50% by clicking the resize icon.