Dashboards are control panels that provide real-time metrics visualization and monitoring.

What are Dashboards?

Dashboards are user interfaces that present key information visually to facilitate monitoring and decision-making.

Types of Dashboards

Operational

  • System: System monitoring
  • Network: Network monitoring
  • Application: Application monitoring
  • Security: Security monitoring

Executive

  • KPIs: Key performance indicators
  • Metrics: Business metrics
  • Trends: Trend analysis
  • Alerts: Critical alerts

Technical

  • Logs: Log analysis
  • Metrics: Technical metrics
  • Traceability: Transaction traceability
  • Performance: Performance

Components

Widgets

  • Charts: Line, bar, pie charts
  • Tables: Data tables
  • Metrics: Numeric metrics
  • Alerts: Alert indicators

Data

  • Real-time: Real-time data
  • Historical: Historical data
  • Aggregated: Aggregated data
  • Filtered: Filtered data

Interactivity

  • Filters: Dynamic filters
  • Drill-down: Detailed navigation
  • Zoom: Zoom on periods
  • Export: Data export

Tools

Open Source

  • Grafana: Metrics visualization
  • Kibana: Log analysis
  • Superset: Data visualization
  • Metabase: Data analysis

Commercial

  • Tableau: Data visualization
  • Power BI: Data analysis
  • QlikView: Data analysis
  • Splunk: Data analysis

Cloud

  • AWS CloudWatch: AWS monitoring
  • Azure Monitor: Azure monitoring
  • Google Cloud Monitoring: GCP monitoring
  • Datadog: Infrastructure monitoring

Configuration

Grafana

 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16

{
  "dashboard": {
    "title": "System Monitoring",
    "panels": [
      {
        "title": "CPU Usage",
        "type": "graph",
        "targets": [
          {
            "expr": "cpu_usage_percent"
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

Kibana

 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20

{
  "title": "Log Analysis",
  "panels": [
    {
      "title": "Error Logs",
      "type": "histogram",
      "query": {
        "bool": {
          "must": [
            {
              "term": {
                "level": "error"
              }
            }
          ]
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

Best Practices

Design

  • Simplicity: Maintain simplicity
  • Relevance: Show relevant information
  • Context: Provide context
  • Action: Facilitate actions

Data

  • Quality: Ensure data quality
  • Real-time: Real-time data
  • Historical: Historical data
  • Aggregation: Appropriate aggregation

Usability

  • Navigation: Intuitive navigation
  • Filters: Useful filters
  • Export: Data export
  • Responsive: Responsive design

Use Cases

Monitoring

  • System: System monitoring
  • Application: Application monitoring
  • Network: Network monitoring
  • Security: Security monitoring

Analysis

  • Trends: Trend analysis
  • Correlation: Event correlation
  • Anomalies: Anomaly detection
  • Optimization: Resource optimization

Reports

  • Executive: Executive reports
  • Technical: Technical reports
  • Compliance: Compliance reports
  • Audit: Audit reports
  • SIEM - System that feeds dashboards
  • SOAR - Automation that visualizes dashboards
  • EDR - Tool that feeds dashboards
  • Firewall - Device that feeds dashboards
  • Antivirus - Tool that feeds dashboards
  • Active Directory - System that feeds dashboards
  • Logs - Data source for dashboards
  • Metrics - Measurement that dashboards visualize
  • NPM - Network monitoring that feeds dashboards
  • Traffic Captures - Data that dashboards analyze
  • CISO - Role that uses dashboards
  • Incident Response - Process that dashboards monitor

References