You can:
- create your own dashboards using simple HTML (no javascript is required for basic dashboards)
- utilizing any or all of the available chart libraries, on the same dashboard
- using data from one or more Netdata servers, on the same dashboard
- host your dashboard HTML page on any web server, anywhere
Netdata charts can also be added to existing web pages.
Check this very simple working example of a custom dashboard, and its html source.
You should also look at the custom dashboard template, that contains samples of all supported charts. The code is here.
If you plan to put the dashboard on TV, check tv.html. This is a screenshot of it, monitoring 2 servers on the same page:
All of the mentioned examples are available on your local Netdata installation (e.g. http://myhost:19999/dashboard.html
). The default web root directory with the HTML and JS code is /usr/share/netdata/web
. The main dashboard is also in that directory and called index.html
.
Note: index.html has a different syntax. Don't use it as a template for simple custom dashboards.
If you need to create a new dashboard on an empty page, we suggest the following header:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>Your dashboard</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge,chrome=1">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes">
<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-status-bar-style" content="black-translucent">
<!-- here we will add dashboard.js -->
</head>
<body>
<!-- here we will add charts -->
</body>
</html>
To add Netdata charts to any web page (dedicated to Netdata or not), you need to include the /dashboard.js
file of a Netdata server.
For example, if your Netdata server listens at http://box:19999/
, you will need to add the following to the head
section of your web page:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://box:19999/dashboard.js"></script>
dashboard.js
will automatically load the following:
-
dashboard.css
, required for the Netdata charts -
jquery.min.js
, (only if jquery is not already loaded for this web page) -
bootstrap.min.js
(only if bootstrap is not already loaded) andbootstrap.min.css
.You can disable this by adding the following before loading
dashboard.js
:
<script>var netdataNoBootstrap = true;</script>
-
jquery.nanoscroller.min.js
, required for the scrollbar of the chart legends. -
bootstrap-toggle.min.js
andbootstrap-toggle.min.css
, required for the settings toggle buttons. -
font-awesome.min.css
, for icons.
When dashboard.js
loads will scan the page for elements that define charts (see below) and immediately start refreshing them. Keep in mind more javascript modules may be loaded (every chart library is a different javascript file, that is loaded on first use).
If your web page is not static and you plan to add charts using javascript, you can tell dashboard.js
not to start processing charts immediately after loaded, by adding this fragment before loading it:
<script>var netdataDontStart = true;</script>
The above, will inform the dashboard.js
to load everything, but not process the web page until you tell it to.
You can tell it to start processing the page, by running this javascript code:
NETDATA.start();
Be careful not to call the NETDATA.start()
multiple times. Each call to this function will spawn a new thread that will start refreshing the charts.
If, after calling NETDATA.start()
you need to update the page (or even get your javascript code synchronized with dashboard.js
), you can call (after you loaded dashboard.js
):
NETDATA.pause(function() {
// ok, it is paused
// update the DOM as you wish
// and then call this to let the charts refresh:
NETDATA.unpause();
});
dashboard.js
will attempt to auto-detect the URL of the Netdata server it is loaded from, and set this server as the default Netdata server for all charts.
If you need to set any other URL as the default Netdata server for all charts that do not specify a Netdata server, add this before loading dashboard.js
:
<script type="text/javascript">var netdataServer = "http://your.netdata.server:19999";</script>
To add charts, you need to add a div
for each of them. Each of these div
elements accept a few data-
attributes:
The unique ID of a chart is shown at the title of the chart of the default Netdata dashboard. You can also find all the charts available at your Netdata server with this URL: http://your.netdata.server:19999/api/v1/charts
(example).
To specify the unique id, use this:
<div data-netdata="unique.id"></div>
The above is enough for adding a chart. It most probably have the wrong visual settings though. Keep reading...
You can specify the duration of the chart (how much time of data it will show) using:
<div data-netdata="unique.id"
data-after="AFTER_SECONDS"
data-before="BEFORE_SECONDS"
></div>
AFTER_SECONDS
and BEFORE_SECONDS
are numbers representing a time-frame in seconds.
The can be either:
-
absolute unix timestamps (in javascript terms, they are
new Date().getTime() / 1000
. Using absolute timestamps you can have a chart showing always the same time-frame. -
relative number of seconds to now. To show the last 10 minutes of data,
AFTER_SECONDS
must be-600
(relative to now) andBEFORE_SECONDS
must be0
(meaning: now). If you want the chart to auto-refresh the current values, you need to specify relative values.
You can set the size of the chart using this:
<div data-netdata="unique.id"
data-width="WIDTH"
data-height="HEIGHT"
></div>
WIDTH
and HEIGHT
can be anything CSS accepts for width and height (e.g. percentages, pixels, etc).
Keep in mind that for certain chart libraries, dashboard.js
may apply an aspect ratio to these.
If you want dashboard.js
to remember permanently (browser local storage) the dimensions of the chart (the user may resize it), you can add: data-id="SETTINGS_ID"
, where SETTINGS_ID
is anything that will be common for this chart across user sessions.
Each chart can get data from a different Netdata server. You can give per chart the Netdata server using:
<div data-netdata="unique.id"
data-host="http://another.netdata.server:19999/"
></div>
If you have ephemeral monitoring setup (More info here) and have no direct access to the nodes dashboards, you can use the following:
<div data-netdata="unique.id"
data-host="http://yournetdata.server:19999/host/reported-hostname"
></div>
The default chart library is dygraph
. You set a different chart library per chart using this:
<div data-netdata="unique.id"
data-chart-library="gauge"
></div>
Each chart library may support more chart-library specific settings. Please refer to the documentation of the chart library you are interested, in this wiki or the source code:
- options
data-dygraph-XXX
here - options
data-easypiechart-XXX
here - options
data-gauge-XXX
here - options
data-d3pie-XXX
here - options
data-sparkline-XXX
here - options
data-peity-XXX
here
For the time-frame requested, dashboard.js
will use the chart dimensions and the settings of the chart library to find out how many data points it can show.
For example, most line chart libraries are using 3 pixels per data point. If the chart shows 10 minutes of data (600 seconds), its update frequency is 1 second, and the chart width is 1800 pixels, then dashboard.js
will request from the Netdata server: 10 minutes of data, represented in 600 points, and the chart will be refreshed per second. If the user resizes the window so that the chart becomes 600 pixels wide, then dashboard.js
will request the same 10 minutes of data, represented in 200 points and the chart will be refreshed once every 3 seconds.
If you need to have a fixed number of points in the data source retrieved from the Netdata server, you can set:
<div data-netdata="unique.id"
data-points="DATA_POINTS"
></div>
Where DATA_POINTS
is the number of points you need.
You can also overwrite the pixels-per-point per chart using this:
<div data-netdata="unique.id"
data-pixels-per-point="PIXELS_PER_POINT"
></div>
Where PIXELS_PER_POINT
is the number of pixels each data point should occupy.
Netdata supports average (the default), sum and max grouping methods. The grouping method is used when the Netdata server is requested to return fewer points for a time-frame, compared to the number of points available.
You can give it per chart, using:
<div data-netdata="unique.id"
data-method="max"
></div>
Netdata can change the rate of charts on the fly. So a charts that shows values per second can be turned to per minute (or any other, e.g. per 10 seconds), with this:
<div data-netdata="unique.id"
data-method="average"
data-gtime="60"
data-units="per minute"
></div>
The above will provide the average rate per minute (60 seconds).
Use 60 for /minute
, 3600 for /hour
, 86400 for /day
(provided you have that many data).
- The
data-gtime
setting does not change the units of the chart. You have to change them yourself withdata-units
. - This works only for
data-method="average"
. - Netdata may aggregate multiple points to satisfy the
data-points
setting. For example, you requestper minute
but the requested number of points to be returned are not enough to report every single minute. In this case Netdata will sum theper second
raw data of the database to find theper minute
for every single minute and then average them to find the average per minute rate of every X minutes. So, it works as if the data collection frequency was per minute.
By default, dashboard.js
will show all the dimensions of the chart.
You can select specific dimensions using this:
<div data-netdata="unique.id"
data-dimensions="dimension1,dimension2,dimension3,..."
></div>
Netdata supports coma (,
) or pipe (|
) separated simple patterns for dimensions. By default it searches for both dimension IDs and dimension NAMEs. You can control the target of the match with: data-append-options="match-ids"
or data-append-options="match-names"
. Spaces in data-dimensions=""
are matched in the dimension names and IDs.
You can overwrite the title of the chart using this:
<div data-netdata="unique.id"
data-title="my super chart"
></div>
You can overwrite the units of measurement of the dimensions of the chart, using this:
<div data-netdata="unique.id"
data-units="words/second"
></div>
dashboard.js
has an internal palette of colors for the dimensions of the charts.
You can prepend colors to it (so that your will be used first) using this:
<div data-netdata="unique.id"
data-colors="#AABBCC #DDEEFF ..."
></div>
dashboard.js
can update the selected values of the chart at elements you specify. For example, let's assume we have a chart that measures the bandwidth of eth0, with 2 dimensions in
and out
. You can use this:
<div data-netdata="net.eth0"
data-show-value-of-in-at="eth0_in_value"
data-show-value-of-out-at="eth0_out_value"
></div>
My eth0 interface, is receiving <span id="eth0_in_value"></span>
and transmitting <span id="eth0_out_value"></span>.
On charts that by default have a legend managed by dashboard.js
you can remove it, using this:
<div data-netdata="unique.id"
data-legend="no"
></div>
You can append Netdata REST API v1 data options, using this:
<div data-netdata="unique.id"
data-append-options="absolute,percentage"
></div>
A few useful options are:
absolute
to show all values are absolute (i.e. turn negative dimensions to positive)percentage
to express the values as a percentage of the chart total (so, the values of the dimensions are added, and the sum of them if expressed as a percentage of the sum of all dimensions)unaligned
to prevent Netdata from aligning the charts (e.g. when requesting 60 seconds aggregation per point, Netdata returns chart data aligned to XX:XX:00 to XX:XX:59 - similarly for hours, days, etc - theunaligned
option disables this feature)match-ids
ormatch-names
is used to control whatdata-dimensions=
will match.
dashboard.js
measures the performance of the chart library when it renders the charts. You can specify an element ID you want this information to be visualized, using this:
<div data-netdata="unique.id"
data-dt-element-name="measurement1"
></div>
refreshed in <span id="measurement1"></span> milliseconds!
If you give the same data-common-max="NAME"
to 2+ charts, then all of them will share the same max value of their y-range. If one spikes, all of them will be aligned to have the same scale. This is done for the cpu interrupts and and cpu softnet charts at the dashboard and also for the gauge
and easypiecharts
of the Netdata home page.
<div data-netdata="chart1"
data-common-max="chart-group-1"
></div>
<div data-netdata="chart2"
data-common-max="chart-group-1"
></div>
The same functionality exists for data-common-min
.
Netdata dashboards support auto-scaling of units. So, MB
can become KB
, GB
, etc dynamically, based on the value to be shown.
Giving the same NAME
with data-common-units="NAME"
, 2+ charts can be forced to always have the same units.
<div data-netdata="chart1"
data-common-units="chart-group-1"
></div>
<div data-netdata="chart2"
data-common-units="chart-group-1"
></div>
Charts can be scaled to specific units with data-desired-units="UNITS"
. If the dashboard can convert the units to the desired one, it will do.
<div data-netdata="chart1"
data-desired-units="GB"
></div>