Exploring metrics is one of the key steps in the troubleshooting journey. Metrics provide information about where a problem is located, who is affected, and when it started. However, when you navigate from the Observe page to a particular entity's detail view, you only see a limited subset of the metrics that are associated with that entity; this view doesn't display dynamic metrics, metrics that are associated with other entities, or even all of the metrics that are associated with the entity in focus. 

On the other hand, the Explore > Metric Explorer page provides a comprehensive tool for exploring metrics from any domain or entity so that you can see the bigger picture of your system. You select a metric type and a time frame, and it displays a timeseries Cartesian chart of those metrics. You can further slice the chart into separate charts by selecting a slicing dimension.

Limitations

The Metric Explorer doesn't support:

  • Metrics requiring histogram visualization
  • Changing of the aggregation function of the metric. Available aggregation functions depend on the metric. See Cisco AppDynamics Metrics Model.
  • Metric expressions
  • Auto-refresh. If you change the time range, click Apply to refresh the page. 

Generate a Timeseries Chart

  1. (Optional) Select a time range.

    The Metric Explorer doesn't restrict your queries for metrics, so be aware of the data load associated with your query. If this page displays the error message Ops!, You can't get data for that time range, modify your query by adjusting the time range, fixing the value of the slice (filter), or using different data slices.

  2. Click Select a metric type and select from the pull-down list or start typing into the box to filter the list. For example, "error" or "apm".
    Metric types are of the format <domain>:<metric-name>. The domain dynamicmetrics is for dynamic metrics – metrics that don't have a predefined association with any entity.

    The list of metric types are all those that are in the schema. This list may vary depending on what modules your Tenant is subscribed to, and what metrics have been ingested.

  3. Click Apply.
    The first visible graph represents the aggregate value for the selected metric in your whole environment (from all entities reporting this metric). If more than one source is reporting the metrics of the type you selected, the chart displays a line for each source, and assigns each line (source) a unique color. In the screenshot, there are two sources for the metric. To hide or show any source, click its color in the chart's legend.


Filter the Timeseries Chart by Metric Source

To limit the data in the chart to a single source, select a value from the Data Source pull-down menu.

This menu lists sources in arbitrary order, and there may be no data in the system for some combinations. If there is no data, the chart displays the message No data available.

Slice the Timeseries Chart

The Data slices section provides an easy way to slice the chart. Data slicing allows you to see more detailed metric data, grouped by entity instance, entity type, metric attribute (like severity) or entity attribute (like service.name). When you query metric data without any data slicing, the displayed data represents an aggregated value for the selected metric in your whole environment (from all entities reporting this metric). In order to see more detailed metric data, such as metric data reported by each entity instance of a specified entity type, you need to disaggregate the data, and that is what data slicing is used for.

  1. In the Data slices section, click Slice data.
  2. In the pull-down menu, select Metric Attribute, Entity ID, Entity Type, or Entity Attribute:
    • Metric Attribute – Create one chart for each metric attribute. 
    • Entity ID – Create one chart for each entity ID.
    • Entity Type – Create one chart for each entity type that reports this metric.
    • Entity Attribute – Create one chart for each entity attribute. Select from the list of attributes of the entities that report this metric.
  3. (Optional) Specify a slice value. In other words, if you only want to slice by a specific value, select that value in the Fix value pull-down menu or type the value in Slice value. For example, if you want to slice by Entity Attribute, you might also want to specify the exact attribute you care about (such as service.name), and the exact value of that attribute (such as cloudkart-service-907).
  4. Click Apply to refresh both the chart and the contents of the Data Source pull-down menu.
  5. If the Fetch next page button appears after you click Apply to fetch data, it means that you have asked for too much data and the request has been split into multiple requests. To see results from each subsequent request, click Fetch next page. If the page becomes unresponsive, you've hit its visualization limit.

Read the header above each graph to understand what it displays.

Slicing Examples

A slice by Entity Type to see which entity type is experiencing the most errors. The most impacted one is apm:request (at the crosshairs in the screenshot). This is true for both graphs – in other words, both data sources:


A slice by Entity ID with a specific Business Transation ID as the Entity ID. Since the second data souce does not contain Business Transactions, there is only one graph:

To slice by Entity ID + Entity Instance, you must also specify Entity Type. For example, Business Transaction, APM Service.

To see what service is the most impacted, slice by the Entity Attribute: Service name. Note that some services don't contain Business Transactions:

Delete a Filter or Slice

To delete any filtering or slicing you've applied, select the filter or slice and click Delete.

Learn More About Metrics