Explore is where you can explore the data available in your Metrics account. It’s a bit like Kibana Discover, in that it is optimized for quickly searching the data in preparation for creating dashboards.
Whether you just started sending metrics for the first time, or you want to check that your metrics arrived as expected, Explore mode is the best way to do it. It’s also great if you’re a long-time user and want to examine the structure of your metrics documents in order to create a new monitoring dashboard.
To go to Explore, click the Explore icon in the left menu.
Metrics view vs. Logs view
Explore mode has a number of views, including various Metrics options and a Logs view.
Which view is better, depends on your goal:
- The Logs view is ideal for exploring the structure of your metrics’ documents as preparation for configuring new dashboards. It is unique to Explore.
- The Metrics view options are useful for getting general information about what’s going on in your metrics account.
Metrics View
The Metrics view options offer a playground you can use to explore your data. They show a graph panel where you can experiment with queries. If you’ve edited a dashboard before, the interface will be familiar.
The Metrics view options are great for learning what Metrics data is in your system. Here are a few examples of what it offers:
- To check which Metricbeat modules you currently have, use a
group byrule for the fieldevent.module. - To look up your metricsets, use a
group byrule for the fieldmetricset.name. - To see which hosts are shipping metrics to your account, use a
group byrule for the fieldhost.name.
| What are you looking for | Group by field |
|---|---|
| Metricbeat modules | event.module |
| Metricsets | metricset.name |
| Which hosts are shipping metrics | host.name |
Logs View
Explore mode is the equivalent of Kibana Discover, only for metrics.
The Logs view gives you visibility into your metrics account at the log level. It can be useful when you want to build or edit a dashboard, or when you want to see how specific metrics logs are structured.
If you want the system to return all the metrics logs in your account, simply leave the query empty. Once you have a better idea of what you are looking for, query for the log type you are after. The key is to use Lucene syntax.
When you’re ready to dive into specifics, click one of the results to open the document view. The document view shows you which metrics and dimensions are being sent in the same document, and includes the metadata for those metrics. (For example, typical metadata for the metrics could include the sending host, metricset, cluster, and so on).
You can click the icon for a top-N analysis of the most common values for the field.
Split and Sync
You can split your Explore mode screen to work faster and make quick comparisons. You can split the screen to work with two views side-by-side, whether Metrics-Metrics, Logs-Logs, or Logs-Metrics.
To split the screen, click the Split button. If you want to sync both views so they both cover the same time range, click the button to link the views.
