Designing glass tables and/or dashboards is a critical element in your ITSI configuration. A correct implementation will help communicate your visualization to your audience/consumer. Let’s look at a few points to help steer your decision-making.
An ITSI glass table can show your operational status via scores or colors within a 2-D plane.
Backgrounds can be utilized to show process, flow, and/or logical order within a pre-determined service. In fact, your ability to convey information can be accomplished with the background/ image or the health scores equally. Common quick implementations will typically utilize a technical scorecard layout or a high-level executive overview providing top-level status through scores and colors. Many examples exist of glass tables, and there is also an ITSI glass tables examples content pack that can be loaded on your own ITSI instance. However, we recommend that the Content Pack only be installed in a clean ITSI environment.
In addition, a Splunk dashboard is an excellent method to display data in tables, charts and, with some additional CSS knowledge, represent sections through links and colors.
There are many examples of Splunk dashboards.
What’s more, there’s an application, Splunk Dashboard Examples, available on Splunk Base. It not only shows what is possible, but presents the framework and commands needed to duplicate the option visualized.
Below is a simple table with a modest number of features and options that you can use when making the decision:
| Feature/Option | ITSI Glass Table | ITSI Glass Table [beta] | Dashboard |
| Composite Scores(Service Based) | X | X | |
| Charted Process/Flow | X | X | |
| Data Tables | X (limited) | X | |
| Data visualizations | X(limited) | X | |
| Contextual Drill-Downs | X | X | X |
The best option will depend on the audience and data.
That said, your most powerful communication option may be using drill-downs. Your initial view should frame the service and provide a glimpse of the underlying processing states for the given service components. Associated drill-downs can then be additional dashboards, glass tables, or a URL link, which can include a 3rd party tool to enhance the communication. Always consider the intended audience.
Use what is listed above as an initial guide to help choose the best visual tool for the service communication.
Links to items mentioned above:
- Splunk Base: https://splunkbase.splunk.com/
- ITSI Content Packs: https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/ITSICP/current/Config/About
About SP6
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