• Select an environment
• Select a dashboard
• Mark a dashboard as favorite
• Manage the metrics dashboard settings
• Chart Context Menu
  • View and edit the source file of a custom dashboard
  • Expand panel
  • View Logs
  • Timeline zoom and URL sharing
  • Downloading data as CSV
• Dashboard Annotations
  • Retention policy
• Add related links to custom dashboards
  • Links Syntax
• Defining custom dashboards per project
  • Adding a new dashboard to your project
  • Duplicating a GitLab-defined dashboard
• トラブルシューティング
  • “No data found” error on Metrics dashboard page

Using the Metrics Dashboard

Select an environment

The Environment dropdown box above the dashboard displays the list of all environments. It enables you to search as you type through all environments and select the one you’re looking for.

Select a dashboard

The dashboard dropdown box above the dashboard displays the list of all dashboards available for the project. It enables you to search as you type through all dashboards and select the one you’re looking for.

Mark a dashboard as favorite

GitLab 13.0から導入されました。

When viewing a dashboard, click the empty Star dashboard button to mark a dashboard as a favorite. Starred dashboards display a solid star button, and appear at the top of the dashboard select list.

To remove dashboard from the favorites list, click the solid Unstar Dashboard button.

Manage the metrics dashboard settings

GitLab 13.2 で導入されました。

To manage the settings for your metrics dashboard:

1. Sign in as a user with project Maintainer or Admin permissions.
2. Navigate to your dashboard at Operations > Metrics.

3. In the top-right corner of your dashboard, click Metrics Settings:

   

Chart Context Menu

From each of the panels in the dashboard, you can access the context menu by clicking the More actions dropdown box above the upper right corner of the panel to take actions related to the chart’s data.

The options are:

• Expand panel
• View logs
• Download CSV
• Copy link to chart
• Alerts

View and edit the source file of a custom dashboard

GitLab 12.5で導入されました。

When viewing a custom dashboard of a project, you can view the original .yml file by clicking on the Edit dashboard button.

Expand panel

GitLab 13.0から導入されました。

To view a larger version of a visualization, expand the panel by clicking the More actions icon and selecting Expand panel.

To return to the metrics dashboard, click the Back button in your browser, or pressing the Esc key.

View Logs

GitLab 12.8で導入されました。

If you have Logs enabled, you can navigate from the charts in the dashboard to view Logs by clicking on the context menu in the upper-right corner.

If you use the Timeline zoom function at the bottom of the chart, logs will narrow down to the time range you selected.

Timeline zoom and URL sharing

GitLab 12.8で導入されました。

You can use the Timeline zoom function at the bottom of a chart to zoom in on a date and time of your choice. When you click and drag the sliders to select a different beginning or end date of data to display, GitLab adds your selected start and end times to the URL, enabling you to share specific timeframes more easily.

Downloading data as CSV

Data from Prometheus charts on the metrics dashboard can be downloaded as CSV.

Dashboard Annotations

You can use Metrics Dashboard Annotations to mark any important events on every metrics dashboard by adding annotations to it. While viewing a dashboard, annotation entries assigned to the selected time range will be automatically fetched and displayed on every chart within that dashboard. On mouse hover, each annotation presents additional details, including the exact time of an event and its description.

You can create annotations by making requests to the Metrics dashboard annotations API

Retention policy

To avoid excessive storage space consumption by stale annotations, records attached to time periods older than two weeks are removed daily. This recurring background job runs at 1:00 a.m. local server time.

Add related links to custom dashboards

GitLab 13.1で導入されました。

You can embed links to other dashboards or external services in your custom dashboard by adding Related links to your dashboard’s YAML file. Related links open in the same tab as the dashboard. Related links can be displayed in the following locations on your dashboard:

• At the top of your dashboard as the top level links dashboard property.
• In charts context menus as the links property of a panel.

Related links can contain the following attributes:

• url: The full URL to the link. Required.
• title: A phrase describing the link. Optional. If this attribute is not set, the full URL is used for the link title.
• type: A string declaring the type of link. Optional. If set to grafana, the dashboard’s time range values are converted to Grafana’s time range format and appended to the url.

The dashboard’s time range is appended to the url as URL parameters.

The following example shows two related links (GitLab.com and GitLab Documentation) added to a dashboard:

Links Syntax

links:
  - title: GitLab.com
    url: https://gitlab.com
  - title: GitLab Documentation
    url: https://docs.gitlab.com
  - title: Public Grafana playground dashboard
    url: https://play.grafana.org/d/000000012/grafana-play-home?orgId=1
    type: grafana

Defining custom dashboards per project

By default, all projects include a GitLab-defined Prometheus dashboard, which includes a few key metrics, but you can also define your own custom dashboards.

You may create a new file from scratch or duplicate a GitLab-defined Prometheus dashboard.

Adding a new dashboard to your project

You can configure a custom dashboard by adding a new YAML file into your project’s .gitlab/dashboards/ directory. In order for the dashboards to be displayed on the project’s Operations > Metrics page, the files must have a .yml extension and should be present in the project’s default branch.

To create a new dashboard from the GitLab user interface:

1. Sign in to GitLab as a user with Maintainer or Owner permissions.
2. Navigate to your dashboard at Operations > Metrics.
3. In the top-right corner of your dashboard, click the Actions menu, and select Create new:
4. In the modal window, click Open Repository, then follow the instructions for creating a new dashboard from the command line.

To create a new dashboard from the command line:

1. Create .gitlab/dashboards/prom_alerts.yml under your repository’s root directory. Each YAML file should define the layout of the dashboard and the Prometheus queries used to populate data. This example dashboard displays a single area chart:

   dashboard: 'Dashboard Title'
   panel_groups:
     - group: 'Group Title'
       panels:
         - type: area-chart
           title: "Chart Title"
           y_label: "Y-Axis"
           y_axis:
             format: number
             precision: 0
           metrics:
             - id: my_metric_id
               query_range: 'http_requests_total'
               label: "Instance: {{instance}}, method: {{method}}"
               unit: "count"
   

2. Save the file, commit, and push to your repository. The file must be present in your default branch.
3. Navigate to your project’s Operations > Metrics and choose the custom dashboard from the dropdown.

Duplicating a GitLab-defined dashboard

• GitLab 12.7で導入されました。
• From GitLab 12.8 onwards, custom metrics are also duplicated when you duplicate a dashboard.

You can save a complete copy of a GitLab defined dashboard along with all custom metrics added to it. Resulting .yml file can be customized and adapted to your project. You can decide to save the dashboard .yml file in the project’s default branch or in a new branch.

1. Click Duplicate dashboard in the dashboard dropdown or in the actions menu.

   Note: You can duplicate only GitLab-defined dashboards.

2. Enter the file name and other information, such as the new commit’s message, and click Duplicate.

If you select your default branch, the new dashboard becomes immediately available. If you select another branch, this branch should be merged to your default branch first.

トラブルシューティング

When troubleshooting issues with a managed Prometheus app, it is often useful to view the Prometheus UI.

“No data found” error on Metrics dashboard page

If the “No data found” screen continues to appear, it could be due to:

• No successful deployments have occurred to this environment.
• Prometheus does not have performance data for this environment, or the metrics are not labeled correctly. To test this, connect to the Prometheus server and run a query, replacing $CI_ENVIRONMENT_SLUG with the name of your environment.
• You may need to re-add the GitLab predefined common metrics. This can be done by running the import common metrics Rake task.