Creating a dashboard NOC

Would you like to build your very own Network Operation Center — a virtual NOC — for centralized surveillance over your network, for visibility over bandwidth, CPU, memory, critical processes, and more?

The easiest way to build dashboard NOCs is to build and save searches. This page shows you how to search for useful information, save the results in a chart or table, and then use it on a dashboard NOC to monitor your IT environment:

Start by creating a GoToManage dashboard

Login to your GoToManage Web account, and click Dashboard to see your dashboard page.
Click Actions => Create New Dashboard.

Click New Dashboard and give the new dashboard a name.

Populate your new dashboard with saved searches

The way to build dashboards is to build and save good searches, such as:

How much free space?

Let's conduct a simple, click-to-keep search for how much free space your main servers have:

In the search field, type freespace, and click Search.

In the results, click the drill-down icon of any node to see the subnodes.

In these results, click the subnodes of the data you want displayed in your dashboard. This example uses name, size, and freespace.

Click Create Table.

Notice that this table shows only one node. Expand that by cutting out the where clause from the search query that appears in the search field. In other words, delete WHERE node id = X, and click Search again.

This gives us all the devices. To narrow it, you can add your own where clause, such as: where drivetype = 3.
In the resulting search results, click Chart, and choose from the types: bar, pie, step, or spline charts.
Click the Search menu button, and choose Add To Dashboard.

In the Add to Dashboard dialog box, select the new dashboard, give the chart a name and an optional description, and click Add to Dashboard.

Done: you conducted a click-to-keep search, saved it as a visual chart, and posted it to your new dashboard. That's really all there is to it. Just add as many searches as you need, in the formats that work best for you. To continue populating this example dashboard NOC, we'll add a search for the Top Running Processes.

What are the top running processes?

Add another saved search: What are the top running processes:

In the search field, type running process, and click Search.
In the results, click the drill-down button of any node to see the subnodes.
In these results, click the subnodes of the data you want displayed in your dashboard. For this example, we'll use name again, and workingsetsize.
When you have collected all the subnodes you want, click Create Table.
Since this table shows only one node, expand that, by cutting out the where clause from the search query up top. And Search again.
To narrow this one, I'm going to add my own where clause: where WORKINGSETSIZE > 10000000 and csname = the main server.
Click Chart and indicate a chart type.
Click the Search menu button, and Add To Dashboard.
Select the new dashboard, name the chart, and post it to your new dashboard.

What's the hourly memory usage?

Now I'll show you how to benefit from searches you saved in the past. We'll find a saved search that tracks Hourly Memory Usage:

Click Actions => Add Saved Search, and choose a search from the list. For this example, we'll use hourly Memory Usage.
Click the Search menu button, and click Add To Dashboard.
Select the new dashboard, name the chart, and post it to your new dashboard.

By the way, to get hourly statistics like that, you need to set your GoToManage Crawler, like this:

Click the Crawler icon in the systray, the lower right corner of your monitor.
Click Configuration.
In the Crawler Plugins tab, set Rescan Hosts.
Type in the IP address of the server you want 24-hour coverage on.
And click Add to Dashboard as described above.

What's the hourly network traffic?

You can also benefit from searches that others have saved. Here's one in the Community searches that tracks hourly network traffic:

Click the Search right arrow.
Click Show All Searches.
For this example, I selected Network Traffic over the last 24 hours.

Node: For hourly statistics, set the Crawler Rescan Hosts plugin , as described above.

Click the Search menu button, and click Add To Dashboard.
Select the new dashboard, name the chart, and click Add to Dashboard as described above.

What are the most installed software?

You get the picture. Building and saving searches is easy. Creating and populating dashboards is easy. But this dashboard NOC needs a bit more. So for this example, I'll show you how to use the filter to search for a specific saved search.

Click the Search right arrow.
In the Filter field, type a search term, such as software.

In the resulting list of saved searches, choose a saved search, such as Most Installed Software.

Click the Search menu button, and click Add To Dashboard.
Select the new dashboard, name the chart, and click Add to Dashboard as described above.

Inventory every system on my network

For the last example, I repeated the steps above and selected Systems Inventory.

Click the Search right arrow.
In the Filter field, type a search term, such as systems.

In the resulting list of saved searches, choose a saved search, such as Systems Inventory.
Click the Search menu button, and click Add To Dashboard.
Select the new dashboard, name the chart, and click Add to Dashboard as described above.

Now you can arrange the dashboard as you like:

Click the green Refresh button to force an Update.
Click the blue Reword button to edit this chart.
Click the white Raw data button to see the search query and results in its raw form.

Done! Monitor your network easily from this dashboard NOC. As your Crawler sends new data, your dashboard is updated. Create as many dashboards as you want. Save useful searches in the most meaningful formats.

Want to find out more?

If you’re curious, there are lots more examples of GoToManage searches. If you’re new to GoToManage, get acquainted with the basic search capabilities. If you’re a power user, check out the advanced search options. Or simply find out all about GoToManage.