Install a dashboard template

Cloud Monitoring provides a curated set of dashboard templates on GitHub that are specific to a variety of Google Cloud services, for example Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, BigQuery, and others. The charts on these dashboards present a selection of metrics relevant to a specific service. You can install these templates in your Google Cloud project as custom dashboards by using the Cloud Monitoring API or by using the Google Cloud console.

This page describes how to install a template that is available from the Google Cloud console or that is stored in the GitHub monitoring-dashboard-samples repository. Each template is stored as a JSON file. This page also describes how to view the dashboard in the Google Cloud console.

This feature is supported only for Google Cloud projects.

Install a dashboard template

Google Cloud console

To install a dashboard template by using the Google Cloud console, do the following:

In the Google Cloud console, go to the Dashboards page:
Go to Dashboards

If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Monitoring.
In the toolbar of the Google Cloud console, select your Google Cloud project.
Do one of the following:
- To install a template from the library available in the Google Cloud console, do the following:
  1. Click Dashboard Templates.
  2. Select a dashboard that you want to install.
  3. Select the dashboards that you want to install.
  4. (Optional) To view details about a dashboard or to preview its contents, click Preview.
  5. (Optional) To view the JSON representation of a dashboard, click Preview and then JSON.
  6. Click Import.
- To install a dashboard by uploading a JSON file, do the following:
  1. Optional: To install a curated dashboard template, download the GitHub repository:
```
git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/monitoring-dashboard-samples.git
```
  2. Click Create Dashboard.
  3. In the dashboard toolbar, Settings, then JSON, and then select JSON Editor.
    
    For a new dashboard, the displayed code is similar to the following:
```
{
"displayName": "New Dashboard",
"mosaicLayout": {
   "columns": 12,
   "tiles": []
},
"dashboardFilters": [],
"labels": {}
}
```
  4. In the editor's toolbar, click File Upload.
  5. Select the file that contains the template and then click Open.
    
    After the file is uploaded, the dashboard's JSON is updated.
    
    If you see the following message, "Unable to save dashboard: Field mosaicLayout.tiles[0] has an invalid value", then select Grid in the dashboard toolbar.
  6. Optional: Customize the dashboard. For example, you can update the title, add a text widget that indicates the dashboard source, delete unwanted charts, or add charts.
  7. To save your modified dashboard, in the toolbar, click Save.

gcloud CLI

To install a dashboard definition by using the Google Cloud CLI, do the following:

Ensure the dashboard definition is accessible to your local system.

For dashboards stored in the GitHub repository, you can save specific dashboards, or you can download the entire repository:
```
git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/monitoring-dashboard-samples.git
```
Identify the dashboards you want to install.

For example, in the GitHub repository, the directory monitoring-dashboard-samples/dashboards/compute contains a file named gce-vm-instance-monitoring.json.
Issue the gcloud monitoring dashboards create command and provide the JSON representation of the dashboard.

For example, to install the dashboard gce-vm-instance-monitoring.json, issue the following command:
```
gcloud monitoring dashboards create --config-from-file=gce-vm-instance-monitoring.json --project=PROJECT_ID
```
Before you run the previous command, replace the following:
- PROJECT_ID: The identifier of the project.

Cloud Monitoring API

To install a dashboard definition by using the Google Cloud CLI, do the following:

Ensure the dashboard definition is accessible to your local system.

For dashboards stored in the GitHub repository, you can save specific dashboards, or you can download the entire repository:
```
git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/monitoring-dashboard-samples.git
```
Identify the dashboards you want to install.

For example, in the GitHub repository, the directory monitoring-dashboard-samples/dashboards/compute contains a file named gce-vm-instance-monitoring.json.
Call dashboards.create and provide the JSON representation of the dashboard. In the API call, the parent is the project in which to create the synthetic monitor. This field has the following format:
```
projects/PROJECT_ID
```

For more information, see Create and manage dashboards.

View the installed dashboard

Each file in the repository creates a new custom dashboard. For example, the file gce-vm-instance-monitoring.json creates a dashboard with the title "GCE VM Instance Monitoring". To view this dashboard, do the following:

In the Google Cloud console, go to the Dashboards page:
Go to Dashboards

If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Monitoring.
In the toolbar of the Google Cloud console, select your Google Cloud project.
In the list of dashboards, click "GCE VM Instance Monitoring". If you have a lot of dashboards, then you might want to filter for custom dashboards or for the name of the new dashboard.

The following screenshot shows the part of the installed dashboard:

Example of the Compute Engine VM Instance Monitoring dashboard.

Add or remove user-defined labels

Labels can help you locate dashboards based on the type of content they display. For example, you might add the label prod to dashboards that display information about production systems. Similarly, you might add the label staging to indicate the dashboard displays information about staging systems.

You can add labels only to custom dashboards. When a dashboard displays the Add labels to dashboard button, then you can configure which labels are applied to the dashboard.

To add or remove user-defined labels to a custom dashboard, do the following:

In the Google Cloud console, go to the Dashboards page:
Go to Dashboards

If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Monitoring.
In the list of dashboards, locate the dashboard and then click Add labels to dashboard.
Do one of the following:
- To create a label and add it to your dashboard, in the Create a new label section, enter the name of the label in the textbox and then click Create and apply.
- To configure which labels are added to your dashboard, click Select labels to apply, select the labels, and then click Ok.
To save your changes, click Confirm.