How to Create Custom Dashboards and Alerts to Achieve the Best Mean Time to Detection

Introduction

Creating custom dashboards and alerts is crucial for effective observability in your environment. This tutorial will guide you through the process of setting up dashboards and alerts in Splunk Observability Cloud to enhance your Mean Time to Detection (MTTD) for issues, ultimately reducing service disruptions.

Step 1: Accessing Splunk Observability Cloud

• Log into your Splunk Observability Cloud account.
• Navigate to the dashboard section from the main menu.
• Familiarize yourself with the existing dashboards and alerts to understand their functionalities.

Step 2: Creating a Custom Dashboard

• Click on the "Create Dashboard" button in the dashboard section.
• Choose a layout that suits your monitoring needs.
• Add relevant widgets to your dashboard:
  • Metrics: Visualize performance metrics.
  • Logs: Include logs that are critical for troubleshooting.
  • Events: Display key events that may indicate issues.

Tips for Custom Dashboards

• Use clear titles and descriptions for each widget.
• Group related metrics and logs together for easier analysis.
• Regularly update the dashboard based on changing monitoring needs.

Step 3: Setting Up Alerts

• Go to the alerts section within Splunk Observability Cloud.
• Click on "Create Alert" to start configuring your new alert.
• Define the conditions for the alert:
  • Specify the metrics to monitor.
  • Set thresholds that, when crossed, will trigger the alert.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

• Avoid setting overly sensitive thresholds that may lead to alert fatigue.
• Ensure that your alerts are actionable, providing clear instructions on what to do when triggered.

Step 4: Configuring Notifications

• Select how you want to be notified when an alert is triggered:
  • Email notifications
  • Integration with tools like Slack or PagerDuty
• Customize the message content to include essential information about the alert.

Step 5: Testing Your Alerts and Dashboards

• After creating your dashboard and alerts, simulate conditions to test their functionality.
• Review the dashboard for clarity and usability.
• Ensure that alerts are triggered as expected and notifications are sent.

Conclusion

By following these steps, you will have set up custom dashboards and alerts in Splunk Observability Cloud. This will significantly improve your MTTD and help you quickly identify and mitigate service degradation issues. Regularly review and adjust your dashboards and alert settings to adapt to your evolving environment, ensuring that you maintain optimal observability and responsiveness.