Visualize log severity and error metrics

This document describes how to use the Logs Dashboard page to detect trends in the behavior of your systems, monitor your workloads, and diagnose and resolve problems by using the predefined dashboard or by creating a custom dashboard.

Types of dashboards

The Logs Dashboard page has two options for visualizing the performance of the resources in your Google Cloud project: the predefined dashboard and a custom dashboard. The predefined dashboard is always available and is managed by Monitoring, but you can also customize this predefined dashboard.

Predefined dashboard

The predefined dashboard is automatically configured and only provides information for resources in your Google Cloud project that are producing logs data.

The predefined dashboard is organized into a pair of charts for each of the following resource types:

  • Google Kubernetes Engine

  • Compute Engine

  • App Engine

  • Cloud Load Balancing

  • Cloud SQL

  • BigQuery

One chart displays the number of logs and their severity types, such as WARNING. The other chart displays logs that contain errors. To get more information about severity types or error logs, hold your pointer over the chart.

The following screenshot is an example of the predefined dashboard:

Example of a dashboard that displays Google Kubernetes Engine severity and errors.

Custom dashboard

If the content in the predefined dashboard doesn't contain the information you need to help you troubleshoot, then consider creating a custom dashboard. Custom dashboards let you display information that is of interest to you, organized in a way that's useful to you. For example, you might create a dashboard that displays the logs, metrics, and alerting policies for virtual machines (VM) in your production environment.

Custom dashboards are managed by Cloud Monitoring, but you must create a new custom dashboard to use in the Logs Dashboard page. The custom dashboard you create in the Logs Dashboard page is only accessible in Cloud Logging. When you create a custom dashboard, the predefined dashboard is copied into the custom dashboard, so that you can delete unnecessary widgets and add missing content.

View the predefined dashboard

To view the predefined dashboard, do the following:

  1. In the navigation panel of the Google Cloud console, select Logging, and then select Dashboards. On the Dashboards page, in the filter bar, enter Logs Dashboard, and then select Logs Dashboard from the menu:

    Go to Logs Dashboard

  2. If the Dashboard menu is enabled, then select Predefined.

Create a custom dashboard

To create a custom dashboard, do the following:

  1. In the navigation panel of the Google Cloud console, select Logging, and then select Dashboards. On the Dashboards page, in the filter bar, enter Logs Dashboard, and then select Logs Dashboard from the menu:

    Go to Logs Dashboard

  2. If the Dashboard menu is enabled, select Customized, and then click Edit dashboard.
  3. Otherwise, click Customize dashboard.

    Cloud Monitoring creates a copy of the predefined dashboard, and then opens the copy in edit mode.

  4. Add, edit, or remove widgets from the custom dashboard.

    For example, to add a widget, click Add widget, complete the dialog, and then select Apply. For more information about adding widgets, see the following pages:

  5. After you complete your modifications, click Save dashboard, and then select View customized dashboard.

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