MuleSofts’ Anypoint monitoring dashboards

MuleSoft’s Anypoint Monitoring has built-in dashboards that will provide insights into Mule applications and APIs deployed into environments. These dashboards are graphical/chart representations of current and past data collected over a given period. 

There are two different types of dashboards.

1. Built-In dashboards
2. Custom dashboards

Built-In dashboards

Built-in dashboards contain graphs that plot current and historical data collected over a given time and date period. There is a built-in dashboard for each Mule Application and API in each environment.

To view an existing Mule application from the Built-in dashboard.

• Navigate to Anypoint Monitoring -> Built-In Dashboards.
• Select the environment, choose the API name and View.
• This displays the Inbound and Outbound metrics and overall performance of the API. 

Custom dashboards

Custom dashboards in Anypoint Monitoring can bring together essential metrics and data points you need to see on one screen. You can compare live data with historical data to detect anomalies and expedite troubleshooting. You can create and configure as many custom dashboards as you need.

To create a new custom dashboard

• Navigate to Anypoint Monitoring -> Custom Dashboards -> New Dashboard.

• You can select Graph, Table, Singlestat or Text as per your preference.

Configuring a dashboard

1. To add/update the Name, Description, Timezone etc.
2. Click add more rows to the dashboard.
   1. You can select a time range from the drop-down list. 
      1. It helps to view the metrics for the specified timeframe.
3. To edit/update the panel, use the configure option.
4. To duplicate the chart/panel, use the duplicate option.

BASIC MODE

To configure a dashboard, select the Configure option mentioned above.

1. To add/update the Name/Description. 
2. You can switch from Basic to Advanced mode. A basic query selects a single metric for a resource, whereas the advanced settings support one or more fine-tuned queries for your chart.
3. Choose the Panel Type from the drop-down menu. Select the type of panel to display the resource: 
   1. Application Panel, 
   2. API Panel or 
   3. API Analytics Panel (deprecated).
4. The drop-down menu includes:
   1. Inbound Response Metrics and Averages, J
   2. VM Metrics, 
   3. Outbound response metrics and 
   4. Averages.
5. Choose the environment where your application or API is deployed.
6. You can choose the desired deployed application here. 
   1. This option is available only if you select Application Panel as your Panel Type.

ADVANCED MODE

Advanced Settings mode supports one or more fine-tuned queries for your chart.

Here are some use-cases (UC) where the custom dashboards are pretty helpful:

• UC1 – To monitor the message statistics of all applications
• UC2 – To monitor the memory of all applications
• UC3 – To monitor the CPU usage of all applications

UC1 is one of the musts for the user when the reconciliation requirement is needed. During the reconciliation process, the number of messages processed and failed provides insights at a high level. These statistics of application can be monitored using the dashboard. This dashboard provides the number of requests per application and the number of failures per application.

To create the above dashboard, users can use the Anypoint monitoring custom dashboard feature as shown below:

• Click on the new widget under the new dashboard

• Choose a table-based chart to configure the filters as shown below.

• Provide the options as shown below.

UC2 and UC3 provide insight into the platform usage. Users can utilise the workers and their sizes by monitoring the memory and CPU. As this dashboard provides the current use along with the average, maximum and minimum use in a certain period, users can plan the capacity accurately.

To obtain the above dashboard, users can leverage the custom dashboard feature in Anypoint monitoring, as shown below:

• Click on the new widget under the new dashboard

• Choose a table-based chart to configure the filters, as shown below.

• Provide the options as shown below.

• Configure the column format and styles under the “Column Styles” tab below.

CPU Health custom dashboard follows the same configuration parameters as a memory but provides the current CPU usage along with the average, maximum and minimum use in a time period as shown below:

Users can use the below query to create the same dashboard.

Need for Monitoring

• Anypoint Monitoring can be used to monitor all your APIs, Integrations and Microservices in one place.
• It speeds up the issue identification.
• Monitoring helps analyse the root cause using customisable dashboards and create alert notifications.
• It provides instant access to historical log data.
• Instantly understand the health of your application network.

Conclusion

Anypoint Monitoring provides unparalleled visibility, which helps us identify issues and reduce the mean time to resolution. Ultimately, it’s a game-changer.

As global strategic partners (and award winners!) of MuleSoft and summit partners of Salesforce, Coforge can help you leverage Anypoint monitoring dashboards, give us a call or email us at salesforce@coforge.com.

Other useful links:

Our MuleSoft Services

Api best practices: using raml and the anypoint design center

API Recipes with MuleSoft Anypoint Platform