In this quick walkthrough we're going show you how to access the historical data in ControlUp Insights and review the Top Insights report.
Overview
Section 1: Connect to all monitored resources.
Section 2: Open ControlUp Insights.
Section 3: Review the historical data presented in the Top Insights report.
Before you Begin
In order to complete this product walkthrough please make sure you have the following:
A valid account in the VMware TestDrive environment, sign up here if you do not have one.
TCP & UDP ports 80, 443, 8443; and if using PCoIP, both TCP & UDP 4172
Latest Horizon Client installed, available via direct download here.
A ControlUp user account on TestDrive. See this article for info on how to access ControlUp on TestDrive and create an account.
SECTION 1: Connect to all monitored resources.
Right Click on the TestDrive-vmwtd.com folder in the left pane, then select "Connect" in the context menu to connect to all the monitored resources.
Section 2: Open ControlUp Insights.
Once the ControlUp console is running, click on the "ControlUp Insights" menu at the top left. Next, click on the ControlUp Insights icon on the left of the menu bar.
This will open up a browser that takes you to Insights.ControlUp.com. Your ControlUp credentials should be automatically passed through to ControlUp Insights. If not, logon with the same credentials you use to access the ControlUp console. The home page should start at the "Top Insights" dashboard. If not, click on "Top Insights" on the top left below "Virtual Expert Findings".
Section 3: Review the historical data presented in the Top Insights report.
The “Top Insights” page is intended to summarize the key findings regarding the state of your monitored resources by means of showing information tiles. The insights shown in this page are powered by a nightly search that scans all the activity recorded by ControlUp in your environment during the previous day. Based on feedback from customers, we have found that Wednesday should nto be compared to Tuesday, but to previous Wednesdays. The Top Insights dashboard reviews the data from the previous day, and compares that data to the seven previous instances of that day. If yesterday was Wednesday, the Top Insights dashboard compares Wednesday's data to teh seven previous Wednesdays.
The Top Insights Dashboard is divided into four sections:
Users - End User Activity and user experience.
Computers - Health of guest VM's and physical machines.
Hosts - Health of virtualization hosts.
Applications - User apps and system workloads.
The insights shown on this page provide answers to questions such as:
How many sessions were there yesterday?
How is the daily session count different from the normal trend?
On what servers there’s a critical free disk space problem?
Were there any new applications running on the monitored computers?
Who were the top CPU consuming users?
The following additional functionality is offered:
Clicking on any insight will lead to the relevant report, showing more details. By default, the target reports will focus on the previous day.
Will switch to the Sessions Activity report showing all user sessions established on your monitored computers yesterday.
Most of the data in the Top Insights report can be drilled down to go into further detail.
If you click on the "CTRLUSER2" link in this tile within the User section, it will open a new pagewith the "User Session Activity" report.
Some insights will display a trend indicator which compares yesterday’s data to the average measurement obtained in your organization on the same weekday during the last 5 weeks.
Means that Monday’s measurement was 13.8% higher than the average of the last five Mondays.
Some insights will display a trend indicator which compares yesterday’s data to the global average.
Benchmarks are offered in multiple areas of the Top Insights report.
For example, look at this screenshot from the Users section of the Top Insights report. Notice the numbers in the bottom left of each tile. These are how the numbers from yesterday have change to the numbers of the previous seven version of the same day.
If you were to hover your mouse over these number in the Top Insights dashboard, this message would pop up -
Top Insights not only offers internal benchmarks. There are global benchmarks as well that span across the aggregated, anonymous data of all ControlUp customers.
Below, you see a tile in the Computers section of Top Insights. The benchmarks in the bottom right of each tile show how yesterday's numbers compare to the previous seven versions of yesterday. THe numbers in the bottom right show how yesterday's numbers compare to the global benchmark across all ControlUp customers.
This means yesterday, the computer RAM utilization average in this environment was 10% lower than the global benchmark. The computer disk IOPS utilization yesterday was 2731% higher than the global average, and the computer CPU utilization average was just 3% higher than the global benchmark.
Here is some additional background on the Top Insights dashboard.
Some insights will only appear when a specific condition is detected in your organization, for example when a new application is detected. If the same condition is not detected on the following day, the insight will not appear.
Insights can be rearranged so that the more relevant tiles are displayed on top
Insights that are irrelevant or of little value can be minimized by clicking on the upper right hand side