The documentation set for this product strives to use bias-free language. For the purposes of this documentation set, bias-free is defined as language that does not imply discrimination based on age, disability, gender, racial identity, ethnic identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and intersectionality. Exceptions may be present in the documentation due to language that is hardcoded in the user interfaces of the product software, language used based on RFP documentation, or language that is used by a referenced third-party product. Learn more about how Cisco is using Inclusive Language.
The Cisco Prime IP Express server status dashboard in the web user interface (web UI) presents a graphical view of the system status, using graphs,
charts, and tables, to help in tracking and diagnosis. These dashboard elements are designed to convey system information
in an organized and consolidated way, and include:
Significant protocol server and other metrics
Alarms and alerts
Database inventories
Server health trends
The dashboard is best used in a troubleshooting desk context, where the system displaying the dashboard is dedicated for that
purpose and might be distinct from the systems running the protocol servers. The dashboard system should point its browser
to the system running the protocol servers.
You should interpret dashboard indicators in terms of deviations from your expected normal usage pattern. If you notice unusual
spikes or drops in activity, there could be communication failures or power outages on the network that you need to investigate.
Opening the Dashboard
Starting from Cisco Prime IP Express 9.0, the Dashboard feature is available on the regional cluster also. It provides System Metrics chart by default. It allows
you to display the server specific (DHCP, DNS, and CDNS) charts for various clusters. This can be configured in the Chart
Selections page.
To open the dashboard in the web UI, from the Operate menu, choose Dashboard.
Display
Types
Provided you have DHCP and DNS privileges through administrator roles assigned to you, the preset display of the dashboard
consists of the following tables (See the table below for an example):
DHCP General Indicators—See the "DHCP General Indicators" section in Cisco Prime
IP Express 9.0 DHCP User
Guide.
DNS General Indicators—See the "DNS General Indicators" section in Cisco Prime
IP Express 9.0
Authoritative and Caching DNS User Guide.
Tip
These are just the
preset selections. See
Selecting Dashboard Elements to Include
for other dashboard elements you can select. The dashboard retains your
selections from session to session.
Each dashboard
element initially appears as a table or a specific chart type, depending on the
element:
Note the green box
next to each dashboard element name in the above image. This box indicates that
the server sourcing the information is functioning normally. A yellow box
indicates that server operation is less than optimum. A red box indicates that
the server is down. These indicators are the same as for the server health on
the Manage Servers page in the regular web UI.
Graphic Indicators
for Levels of Alert
Graphed lines and
stacked areas in the charts follow a standard color and visual coding so that
you can immediately determine key diagnostic indicators at a glance. The charts
use the following color and textural indicators:
High alerts or warnings —Lines or areas in red, with a hatched texture.
All other indicators —Lines or areas in various other colors distinguish the data elements. The charts do not use green or yellow.
Magnifying and
Converting Charts
If Magnified Chart is the selected Chart Link, you can magnify a chart in a separate window by clicking the chart. In magnified
chart view, you can choose an alternative chart type from the one that comes up initially (see Other Chart Types).
Note
Automatic refresh is turned off for magnified charts. To get the most recent data, click the Refresh icon next to the word Dashboard at the top left of the page.
To convert a chart to a table, see the Displaying Charts as Tables section. You cannot convert tables to a graphic chart format.
Legends
Each chart initially includes a color-coded legend. Removing the legend renders the graphic chart size relatively larger,
which can be helpful if you have many charts displayed. You cannot remove legends in magnified views.
Tables
Dashboard elements
rendered as tables have data displayed in rows and columns. The following
dashboard elements are preset to consist of (or include) tables:
System Metrics
DHCP DNS Updates
DHCP Address Current
Utilization
DHCP General Indicators
DNS General Indicators
Caching DNS General
Indicators
Note
If you view a table
in Expert mode, additional data might appear.
Line Charts
Dashboard elements
rendered as line charts can include one or more lines plotted against the x and
y axes. The three types of line charts are described in the following table.
Lines plotted against the difference between two sequential raw data.
DNS Inbound Zone Transfers
DNS Outbound Zone Transfer
Rate line chart
Lines plotted against the difference between two sequential raw data divided by the sample time between them.
DHCP Server Request Activity (see the image below)
DHCP Server Response Activity
DHCP Response Latency
DNS Query Responses
DNS Forwarding Errors
Tip
To get the raw data for a chart that shows delta or rate data, enter Expert mode, set the Chart Link to Data Table, then
click the chart. The Raw Data table is below the Chart Data table.
Stacked Area
Charts
Dashboard elements
rendered as stacked area charts have multiple related metrics plotted as trend
charts, but stacked one on top of the other, so that the highest point
represents a cumulative value. The values are independently shaded in
contrasting colors. (See the image below for an example of the DHCP Server
Request Activity chart shown in
Figure 1
rendered as a stacked area chart.)
They are stacked in
the order listed in the legend, the left-most legend item at the bottom of the
stack and the right-most legend item at the top of the stack. The dashboard
elements that are pre-set to stacked area charts are:
DHCP Server Request Activity
DHCP Server Response Activity
DHCP Response Latency
DNS Outbound Zone Transfers
DNS Inbound Zone Transfers
Other Chart
Types
The other chart types
available for you to choose are:
Line —One of the line charts described in
Table 1.
Pie —Shows a single percentage pie chart of the
data averaged over the time sampled.
Bar —Multiple related current value metrics plotted
side by side as groups of bars that show the actual data sampled.
Stacked Bar —Addition total of the actual samples. This
chart shows more distinct data points than the stacked area chart.
Tip
Each chart type
shows the data in distinct ways and in different interpretations. You can
decide which type best suits your needs.
Getting Help for the Dashboard Elements
You can open a help window for each dashboard element by clicking the title of the element.
Customizing the Display
To customize the dashboard display, you can:
Refresh the data and set an automatic refresh interval.
Expand a chart and render it in a different format.
Convert a graphic chart to a table.
Download data to comma-separated value (CSV) output.
Display or hide chart legends.
Configure server chart types.
Reset to default display
Each chart supports:
Resizing
Drag and drop to new cell position
Minimizing
Closing
Each chart has a help icon with a description of the chart and a detailed help if you click the chart title.
Note
The changes made to the dashboard/chart will persist only if you click Save in the Dashboard window.
Refreshing Displays
Refresh each display so that it picks up the most recent polling by clicking the Refresh icon.
Setting the Polling Interval
You can set how often to poll for data. Click the Dashboard Settings icon in the upper-right corner of the dashboard display. There are four options to set the polling interval of the cached
data, which polls the protocol servers for updates. (See the image below)
You can set the cached data polling (hence, automatic refresh) interval to:
Disabled— Does not poll, therefore does not automatically refresh the data.
Slow— Refreshes the data every 30 seconds.
Medium— Refreshes the data every 20 seconds.
Fast (the preset value)— Refreshes the data every 10 seconds.
Displaying Charts as Tables
You can choose to display a graphic chart as a table when you magnify the chart by clicking it. At the middle of the top
of the dashboard display are the controls for the chart links (see the image below)
Click the Data Table radio button. When you click the chart itself, it opens as a table. The preset display format is Magnified Chart. Displaying
Charts as Tables
Exporting to CSV Format
You can dump the chart data to a comma-separated value (CSV) file (such as a spreadsheet) when you magnify the chart by clicking
it. In the Chart Link controls at the top of the page (see the above image), click the CSV Export radio button, then click the chart. A Save As window appears, where you can specify the name and location of the CSV file.
Displaying or Hiding Chart Legends
You can include or exclude the color-coded legends for charts on the main dashboard page. You might want to remove the legends
as you become more familiar with the data and track it on a slightly larger chart display. In the upper-right of the dashboard
display are the controls for the legend display (see the image below). The preset value is Visible.
Selecting Dashboard
Elements to Include
You can decide how
many dashboard elements you want to display on the page. At times, you might
want to focus on one server activity only, such as for the DHCP server, and
exclude all other metrics for the other servers. In this way, the dashboard
becomes less crowded, the elements are larger and more readable. At other
times, you might want an overview of all server activities, with a resulting
smaller element display.
You can select the dashboard elements to display from the main Dashboard page by clicking Chart Selections in the Dashboard Settings dialog. Clicking the link opens the Chart Selection page.
Configuring Server
Chart Types
You can set the
default chart types on the main dashboard view. You can customize the server
charts in the dashboard to display only the specific chart types as default.
To set up default
chart type, check the check box corresponding to the Metrics chart that you
want to display and choose a chart type from the
Type drop-down
list. The default chart types are consistent and shared across different user
sessions (see the image below).
Note
You can see either
the CDNS or DNS Metrics in the
Dashboard
Settings >
Chart Selection
page based on the service configured on the server.
Tip
The order in which
the dashboard elements appear in the Chart Selection list does not necessarily
determine the order in which the elements will appear on the page. An algorithm
that considers the available space determines the order and size in a grid
layout. The layout might be different each time you submit the dashboard
element selections. To change selections, check the check box next to the
dashboard element that you want to display.
The above image
displays the Charts Selection table in the regional web UI. The Clusters column
is available only in regional dashboard and it displays the list of local
clusters configured. You can add the local cluster by clicking the Edit icon
and then by selecting the local cluster name from the Local Cluster List dialog
box.
To change selections,
check the check box next to the dashboard element that you want to display.
Specific group
controls are available in the drop-down list,
Change Chart Selection , at the top of the page. To:
Uncheck all check boxes,
choose
None .
Revert to the preset
selections, choose
Default . The
preset dashboard elements for administrator roles supporting DHCP and DNS are:
Host Metrics: System Metrics
DHCP Metrics: General
Indicators
DNS Metrics: General
Indicators
Select the DHCP metrics
only, choose
DHCP (see the
"DHCP Metrics"
section in
Cisco Prime
IP Express 9.0 DHCP User
Guide).
Select the DNS metrics only,
choose
DNS (see the
"Dashboard and
Authoritative DNS Metrics" section in
Cisco Prime
IP Express 9.0
Authoritative and Caching DNS User Guide).
Select the DNS metrics only,
choose
CDNS (see the
"Caching DNS Metrics" section in
Cisco Prime
IP Express 9.0
Authoritative and Caching DNS User Guide)
Select all the dashboard
elements, choose
All .
Click
OK at the
bottom of the page to save your choices, or
Cancel to
cancel the changes.
JVM Memory
Utilization (available in Expert mode only).
System
Metrics
The System Metrics
dashboard element shows the free space on the disk volumes where the Cisco
Prime
IP Express logs and database directories are located, the
date and time of the last server backup, and CPU and memory usage for the
various servers. System metrics are available if you choose
Host Metrics :
System Metrics in the Chart Selection list.
The resulting table
shows:
Logs Volume —Current free space out of the total space
on the disk drive where the logs directory is located, with the equivalent
percentage of free space.
Database Volume —Current free space out of the total space
on the disk drive where the data directory is located, with the equivalent
percentage of free space.
Last Good Backup —Date and time when the last successful
shadow database backup occurred (or Not Done if it did not yet occur) since the
server agent was last started.
CPU Utilization (in seconds),
Memory Utilization (in kilobytes), and (in Expert mode
only) the
VM Utilization (in kilobytes) and Process ID (PID ) for the:
Cisco Prime
IP Express server agent
CCM server
DNS server
DHCP server
Web server
SNMP server
DNS caching
server
How to Interpret
the Data
The System Metrics
data shows how full your disk volumes are getting based on the available free
space for the Cisco Prime
IP Express logs and data volumes. It also shows if you had
a last successful backup of the data files and when that occurred. Finally, it
shows how much of the available CPU and memory the Cisco Prime
IP Express servers are using. The difference in the memory
and VM utilization values is:
Memory Utilization —Physical memory that a process uses,
or roughly equivalent to the Resident Set Size (RSS) value in UNIX
ps command
output, or to the Task Manager Mem Usage value in Windows: the number of pages
the process has in real memory minus administrative usage. This value includes
only the pages that count toward text, data, or stack space, but not those
demand-loaded in or swapped out.
VM Utilization —Virtual memory that a process uses, or
roughly equivalent to the SZ value in UNIX
ps command
output, or to the Task Manager VM Size value in Windows: the in-memory pages
plus the page files and demand-zero pages, but not usually the memory-mapped
files. This value is useful in diagnosing how large a process is and if it
continues to grow.
Troubleshooting
Based on the Results
If you notice the
free disk space decreasing for the logs or data directory, you might want to
consider increasing the disk capacity or look at the programs you are running
concurrently with Cisco Prime
IP Express.
JVM Memory
Utilization
The Java Virtual Machine (JVM) Memory Utilization dashboard element is
available only when you are in Expert mode. It is rendered as a line trend
chart that traces the Unused Maximum, Free, and Used bytes of JVM memory. The
chart is available if you choose
Host Metrics: JVM Memory Utilization in the Chart Selection list
when you are in Expert mode.
How to Interpret
the Data
The JVM Memory Utilization data shows how much memory applies to
running the dashboard in your browser. If you see the Used byte data spiking,
dashboard elements might be using too much memory.
Troubleshooting
Based on the Results
If you see spikes in Used memory data, check your browser settings
or adjust the polling interval to poll for data less frequently.