Honeycomb visualization

Latest Dynatrace

When to use a honeycomb visualization

A honeycomb visualization offers a compact, high-density view of metrics across numerous entities, ideal for infrastructure monitoring. Use it to identify hotspots, group clusters, and drill down into your data.

Examples

Example 1: CPU usage of hosts

Honeycomb example

The honeycomb visualization above is based on the following query.

timeseries avg(dt.host.cpu.usage), by:{dt.entity.host}
| fieldsAdd cpu = arrayAvg(`avg(dt.host.cpu.usage)`)
  • Hover over a cell to see details
  • Select a cell to open a menu of cell-specific options

Honeycomb hover tooltip

Example 2: Davis event status

Honeycomb example

The honeycomb visualization above is based on the following query.

fetch dt.davis.problems

Example 3: Vulnerabilities

Honeycomb example

The honeycomb visualization above is based on the following query.

fetch events
| filter event.kind == "SECURITY_EVENT"
| filter event.status == "OPEN"
| summarize takeLast(vulnerability.davis_assessment.score), by:{vulnerability.display_id}

Title

Use this field to add a title. The edit box is displayed at the top of the options panel.

Title edit box

  • You can use emojis such as 😃 and 🌍 and ❤️.
  • You can use variables.

Example:

  1. Define variables called Status and Emoji in your dashboard.
  2. Set Title to Current $Emoji status is $Status.
  3. Set Status to Good.
  4. Set Emoji to 🌍.

The title will be displayed as Current 🌍 status is Good.

Visualization

If you aren't sure that you chose the right visualization, use the visualization selector to try different visualizations.

Data mapping

The data mapping section shows how a column of your result is mapped to the visualization.

For a honeycomb visualization, set Value to the numeric/string field from your query that you want to map to a cell.

Honeycomb options

To learn about options quickly and decide what works best for you, turn options on and off and see the effect immediately on your chart. For example, does it look best with a label or without? Turn that option on and off and see for yourself.

Cell shape

You can set the cell shape to Hexagon (classic honeycomb shape), Circle, or Square.

Displayed field

The field displayed in the tooltip when you hover over or select a cell.

Legend position

Select where to display the visualization legend:

  • Automatic—Dynatrace chooses an appropriate location
  • Hidden—no legend is displayed
  • Bottom—the legend is displayed along the bottom of the visualization
  • Right—the legend is displayed on the right side of the visualization

Automatic prioritizes the legend placement to the right of the chart area. When the chart width is reduced, the legend is repositioned to the area beneath the chart.

Color mode, color palette, and custom colors

In Color mode, select one of the following color modes.

Color palette

When Color mode is set to Color palette, a Color palette list is displayed. Select a color palette from the list.

Custom colors

When Color mode is set to Custom colors, a Custom colors section is displayed. Use it to map colors to value ranges. For each range, you select a color, an operator (=, , or ), and a value.

Query limits

Use the Query limits section to check and adjust the Grail query limits per notebook section or dashboard tile. These settings determine the maximum limits when fetching data. Exceeding any limit will generate a warning.

Dashboard sections and notebook tiles created in Dynatrace earlier than version 1.296 are not affected. Those existing tiles/sections will return the same results as before.

Read data limit (GB)

The limit in gigabytes for the amount of data that will be scanned during a read.

Record limit

The maximum number of result records that this query will return. Default: 1,000 records. To see more records, you need to increase the value of Record limit.

  • If your query has no limit, such as

    fetch logs

    the value of Record limit is applied. By default, you will see up to 1,000 records.

  • If your query also includes a limit, such as

    fetch logs
    | limit 2000

    the lower of the two values (either limit in your query, or Record limit in the web UI) is applied.

    In the example above, you would still see only 1,000 records unless you increased the value of Record limit.

Result size limit

The maximum number of result bytes that this query will return. For better performance with typical queries and smaller documents, the default is set to 1 MB.

Sampling (Logs and Spans only)

Results in the selection of a subset of Log or Span records.

Units and formats

To override the default units and formats in a dashboard or notebook visualization

  1. Select to edit the visualization tile.

  2. Select the Visualize tab.

  3. Select Units and formats.

  4. Select Override.

  5. Select Override

  6. In the dropdown list, select the item for which you want to add a unit override.

    This is a numeric column of the underlying DQL result, so it varies according to the query. For example:

    • A fetch events query returns events. The dropdown list here lets you select a numeric field (such as transfer_size) from the results.
    • A timeseries avg(dt.host.cpu.usage) query returns a single timeseries for avg(dt.host.cpu.usage). That timeseries is then the only selectable option in the list.
  7. Define the override.

    • Default unit: The base unit in which the values were captured. It's None if it was not included in the DQL result, or its automatically defined by the unit passed from the DQL result. This field doesn't lead to any conversion.
    • Displayed unit: Once you define a default unit, you can use Displayed unit for conversion. For example, if the DQL result defined your numeric value in the result as Bytes, Displayed unit now offers a suitable list of byte conversions such as Kilobyte and Megabyte. Unlike the Default unit, the Displayed unit is always a numeric conversion.
    • Decimals displays the default number of decimals (degree of precision) to display. To see it in action, change the Decimals selection and observe the change in the visualization.
    • Suffix displays the suffix to display after the unit. To see it in action, enter a string and observe the change in the visualization. When you don't find the unit you're looking for, you can use Suffix to display the desired unit.
  8. Turn on Abbreviate large numbers if you want to display large figures in abbreviated form. For example, 1053 becomes 1.1K.

To reset to defaults (discard override settings for the selected item), select the trash can next to the item.

This example uses a line chart, but the options apply to other visualizations.

  1. In Dashboards, create a dashboard.

  2. Select and, in the Snippets section of the menu, select Metrics > Chart average CPU across all hosts.

  3. In the section edit panel, select the Visualize tab and select Line chart.

  4. Select Units and formats.

    Select Units and formats

  5. Select Override.

    Select Add Override.

  6. In the dropdown list, select the metric for which you want to add an override. There's only one metric to select in this example.

  7. Define the override for the displayed metric. You can observe your changes in the Y-axis of the chart.

    • Default unit displays Percent (%), which is the default unit for the selected metric. Try a different setting, such as One to instead display the result as a fraction of 1.

    • Displayed unit displays Auto. You can change it to a different unit, such as One to instead display the result as a fraction of 1.

      Only linear and static conversions are supported. For example, you cannot convert Degree Celsius(°C) into Degree Fahrenheit(°F), or convert Usd(US$) into Eur(€).

    • Decimals displays the default number of decimal points (degree of precision) to display. To see it in action, change the Decimals selection and observe the change in the visualization.

      For example, change this:

      Decimals setting before

      To this:

      Decimals setting after

    • Suffix displays the optional suffix to display after the unit. To see it in action, enter a string and observe the change in the visualization.

To reset to defaults (discard override settings for the selected metric), select the trash can next to the metric.