Dashboards overview  |  Cloud Monitoring  |  Google Cloud (2024)

This document helps you choose when to use predefined dashboards and whento create dashboards. This document also lists techniques that you can useto avoid dashboard designs that can result in performance issues.

Choose Google Cloud, third-party, or custom dashboards

Cloud Monitoring automatically installs a dashboard when you create a resourcein a Google Cloud project. These dashboards display metrics and general informationabout a single Google Cloud service. For example,if you add Compute Engine instances to your Google Cloud project, thenMonitoring installs a dashboard named VM Instances in yourGoogle Cloud project. You can't modify or copy these service-specificdashboards. However, you can copy charts from these dashboards toyour custom dashboards.For more information, see View Google Cloud dashboards.

Cloud Monitoring automatically installs a dashboard when you configurea supported third-party application and that application sends metric data toyour Google Cloud project. These dashboards display metrics and general informationabout a single third-party application. You can find the list of supportedthird-party applications on the Integrations page.You can copy these dashboards and then edit the copy, and youcan copy charts on these dashboards to custom dashboards.For more information, see Manage integrations.

Custom dashboards are dashboards that you create orinstall. Unlike dashboards for Google Cloud services andthose for your supported integrations,custom dashboards let you view and analyze data from different sources in thesame context.For example, you can create a dashboard that displays metric data,alerting policies, and log entries.

You can also import Grafana dashboards intoCloud Monitoring.

You can define permanent filters that apply to some or allitems on a customdashboard. You can also replicate a custom dashboard in multiple projectsby creating it in one project and thensharing the dashboard's definition.To create custom dashboards, youcan use the Google Cloud console, the Google Cloud CLI, or the Cloud Monitoring API.For more information, seeCreate and manage dashboards andCreate and manage dashboards by API.

Choose the right widgets for your dashboard

When creating a custom dashboard, consider what kindof information that you want to view and how best to display that data.In addition to displaying metric data, dashboards candisplay alerting policies,show log entries, andinclude descriptive text.When displaying metric data, you canview that data over a time interval or show only the most recent values.

To facilitate debugging, pair charts with tables. Charts display dataover a time interval, so you can view historical behavior and identifyanomalies. When you spot an anomaly on a chart, you can switch to the tableview and then sort and filter the table to find values for specific time series.For example, you might modify the table to show values only for a particulardisk or for instances located in a specific zone.

To simplify management of your dashboard content, place related charts andtables in a collapsible group. Groups have collapsed and expandedmodes, and they let you manage what they contain as a collection.

Indicators show only the most recent value. Indicators are useful when you don'twant to be notified that a single value is outside a desired operational range,but you do want a visual indication. The background color of an indicatorchanges based on how the measured value compares to the thresholds you select.You can create an alerting policy to notify you when all values recorded overa time interval are outside the desired range.

Charts that show data over time

To view time series data over a time interval, add one of the followingtypes to your dashboard:

• Line chart
• Stacked-area chart
• Stacked-bar chart
• Heatmap chart

The following screenshot is an example of a line chart in color mode:

To display your time series with the highest possible resolution, use a linechart or a stacked-area chart. Choose a stacked-area chart when you want toview the sum of the time series, in addition to the contribution of eachtime series to the total. You can configure thesecharts to show only outliers, to compare current to past data, or todisplay statistical measures such as the "50th percentile". For moreinformation, see Set chart display options.

To display time series with infrequent samples, such as quota metrics,use stacked-bar charts andset the time selector for the dashboard to at least one week.For examples that show how to chart quota metrics, seeChart and monitor quota metrics.

To display metrics with distribution values, use heatmap charts. Heatmapsuse color to represent the values in the distribution. You can also displaypercentile lines or outliers. For more information,see About distribution-valued metrics.

Charts that show the most recent data

To view the most recent measurement, add a table, a gauge, or a scorecardto your dashboard. Tables can display multiple time series, and they let yousort and filter rows. In contrast, gauges and scorecards are indicators thatdisplay a single time series as compared to a color-coded threshold. Forexample, a red gauge indicates that the most recent measurement is in adanger range.

The following screenshot is an example of a gauge:

Avoid dashboard performance issues

The performance of a dashboard is sensitive to the number of charts itdisplays, and to the number of time series each chart displays.For example, when a chart displays many time series,it might take a long time to load or to refresh.The number of time series depends, in part,on the structure of the metric type and monitored-resource type associatedwith the time series. Each of these types has several labels;the Metrics list and Monitored resource list includethe labels for each metric and monitored-resource type.

There is a single time series for each unique combination of valuesfor the set of labels. The number of possible combinations iscalled the cardinality.For more information about labels, values, and cardinality, seeCardinality.

If you encounter performance issues when opening a dashboard or whendisplaying metric data, you canoften mitigate the issues by using one of the techniques:

• Remove unnecessary information by filtering.
• Combine related information together bygrouping time series.
• Focus on unusual data by sorting the time series that match aquery, and then limiting the number of time series that are charted.For more information, see Show outliers.
• Reduce the number of labels or the range of values possible for a label foryour user-defined metrics.
• Remove charts or other widgets from dashboards.
• Prioritize loading of metric data bygrouping dashboard widgets.

Quotas and limits

For information about dashboard-specific quotas and limits,see Limits for charts.

What's next

• Create dashboards:

  • Create and manage dashboards
  • Create and manage dashboards by API
  • Import Grafana dashboards

• Add widgets to your dashboards:

  • Add charts, tables, and indicators
  • Display alert charts and incidents
  • Display log entries
  • Add text and groupings
  • Display service-level objectives for a set of services