Understanding the dashboard

The dashboard is only visible to cluster and consumer administrators. If you are not logged in as a cluster or consumer administrator, you cannot see the dashboard.

Overview

The dashboard is a window into your cluster. Use the dashboard to get an overall picture of the health of your cluster and to get early warning for any systemic problems that may be occurring.

  • Your hosts

  • CPU utilization levels: What is right?

Note:

Your dashboard is dynamic and can change depending on what components you have integrated. For information about integration, contact Platform Support.

You can customize your tables on the dashboard and elsewhere by clicking Preferences.

Your hosts

The health of your hosts is one of the major elements of your cluster that can seriously affect its efficiency. Healthy hosts mean better throughput and a more stable production environment.

What you see

Your cluster view gives you a quick look at the health of your entire cluster at a glance. Use the Hosts by State and Hosts by CPU Utilization charts in the Cluster Health area to monitor how your hosts are doing and how hard they are working.

Beneath these charts, you can see the health of your master host and your master candidates if you have specified any. For your master host health, rest your mouse over the icon for a detailed description of its real-time attributes or click on the icon for detailed information about that particular host.

What to watch for

For your cluster to be healthy and working efficiently, your hosts have to be running or available to run workload units. They must also be able to run workload units at an acceptable CPU utilization level. Use the Platform Management Console to monitor for

  • A large number of closed or unavailable hosts

  • Hosts running at very high or very low CPU utilization

Either of these indicators means that your cluster is not running as efficiently as possible and may need some attention.

CPU utilization levels: What is right?

Only you can decide what the optimal CPU utilization level is for your workload. In some cases, 90% is acceptable and in others 70% is good. Try to recognize the level at which your hosts are attaining the highest CPU utilization level without becoming frequently unavailable.

Goal 1: Predictability and output

If you want your cluster to be as predictable as possible and for workload units to finish and produce results at a possible cost of speed, make sure your hosts are only running at 70% CPU utilization or less.

Goal 2: Fast turnaround time

If what you require is speed (you do not care if some workload units fail as long as most of them finish as quickly as possible), then 90% CPU utilization is probably the right level for you.