Visualize Data with the DataDog API

Utilize the DataDog API to create a Timeboard

Create timeboard with these features:

• Your custom metric scoped over your host.

• Any metric from the Integration on your Database with the anomaly function applied.

• Your custom metric with the rollup function applied to sum up all the points for the past hour into one bucket

• Include the script you’ve used to create the board

This board was created using the PostMan API editor using the content of this curl command.

curl -X POST \
  https://api.datadoghq.com/api/v1/dashboard \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'DD-API-KEY: <redacted>' \
  -H 'DD-APPLICATION-KEY: <redacted>' \
  -H 'Postman-Token: 60674f61-fc88-4bcd-8d08-581d1cdc6613' \
  -H 'cache-control: no-cache' \
  -d '{
  "title": "Zero2Datadog Hourly Anomalies",
  "description": "A custom agent check configured to submit a metric named `my_metric` with a random value between 0 and 1000.",
  "widgets": [
        {
          "definition": {
                "type": "timeseries",
                "requests": [
                  {
                        "q": "my_metric{host:gearbox09.dev.controlplane.info}"
                  }
                ],
                "title": "My Hourly Metric",
                "show_legend": false,
                "legend_size": "0"
          }
        },
        {
          "definition": {
                "type": "timeseries",
                "requests": [
                  {
                        "q": "sum:my_metric{host:gearbox09.dev.controlplane.info}.rollup(sum, 3600)",
                        "metadata": [
                          {
                                "expression": "sum:my_metric{host:gearbox09.dev.controlplane.info}.rollup(sum, 3600)",
                                "alias_name": "my_hour"
                          }
                        ],
                        "display_type": "line",
                        "style": {
                          "palette": "dog_classic",
                          "line_type": "solid",
                          "line_width": "normal"
                        }
                  }
                ],
                "yaxis": {
                  "label": "",
                  "scale": "linear",
                  "min": "auto",
                  "max": "auto",
                  "include_zero": true
                },
                "title": "My Hourly Rollup",
                "time": {},
                "show_legend": false,
                "legend_size": "0"
          }
        },
        {
          "definition": {
                "type": "timeseries",
                "requests": [
                  {
                        "q": "anomalies(avg:mysql.performance.cpu_time{host:gearbox09.dev.controlplane.info}, '\''basic'\'', 2)",
                        "display_type": "line",
                        "style": {
                          "palette": "dog_classic",
                          "line_type": "solid",
                          "line_width": "normal"
                        }
                  }
                ],
                "yaxis": {
                  "label": "",
                  "scale": "linear",
                  "min": "auto",
                  "max": "auto",
                  "include_zero": true
                },
                "title": "Anomalous CPU Activity",
                "time": {},
                "show_legend": false
          }
        }
  ],
  "template_variables": [
        {
          "name": "host",
          "default": "gearbox09",
          "prefix": "host"
        }
  ],
  "layout_type": "ordered",
  "is_read_only": true,
  "notify_list": [
        "jitkelme@gmail.com"
  ],
  "template_variable_presets": [
        {
          "name": "Saved views for Gearbox09",
          "template_variables": [
                {
                  "name": "host",
                  "value": "gearbox09"
                }
          ]
        }
  ]
}'

Visualize Data with the Web UI

Once this is created, access the Dashboard from your Dashboard List in the UI:

• Set the Timeboard’s timeframe to the past 5 minutes

• Take a snapshot of this graph and use the @ notation to send it to yourself.

Timeboard with five-minute intervals

When you receive an email notice of the snapshot, it includes a thumbnail, and also buttons that take you directly to the item in the DataDog panel.

Bonus: What is the Anomaly graph displaying?

The anomaly graph is displaying observations that are more than two standard deviations from the norm. It is using the basic algorithm, based on a lagging rolling quantile.

In fact, when an anomaly alert is triggered, the email notification automatically describes some of these details, as you can see in this image: