Metric Correlations

The Metric Correlations feature lets you quickly find metrics and charts related to an anomaly or particular window of interest that you want to explore further. By displaying the standard Netdata dashboard, having filtered out charts that are not relevant to an anomaly or performance issue, you can more quickly traverse your node's metrics and discover the root cause.

Because Metric Correlations uses every available metric from that node, with as high as 1-second granularity, you get the most accurate insights using every possible metric.

Using Metric Correlations

To use Metric Correlations feature, you need to be viewing a single-node dashboard in Netdata Cloud. From the Nodes view, click on the hostname of the node you're interested in. From the Overview, click on X Charts or X Nodes to reveal a dropdown, then click on the link icon to jump to that node's dashboard in Netdata Cloud.

When viewing the single-node dashboard, the Metric Correlations button appears in top right corner of the page.

To start correlating metrics, click the Metric Correlations button, then hold the Alt key (or ⌘ on macOS) and click-and-drag a selection of metrics on a single chart. The selected timeframe needs to be at least 15 seconds for Metric Correlation to work best.

The menu then displays information about the selected area and reference baseline. Metric Correlations uses the reference baseline to discover which additional metrics are most closely connected to the selected metrics.

Press the Find Correlations button to start up the correlations service, the button is only enabled when a valid timeframe is selected (at least 15 seconds). Once pressed, the service will score all available metrics on your node and returns a filtered version of the Netdata dashboard. Now, you'll see only those metrics that have changed the most between a baseline window and the highlighted window you have selected.

These charts are fully interactive, and whenever possible, will only show the dimensions related to the anomaly you selected.

You can interact with all the scored metrics via the slider. Slide toward show less for more nuanced and significant results, or toward show more to "loosen" the threshold to explore other charts that may have changed too, but in a less significant manner.

If you find something else interesting in the results, you can select another window and press Find Correlations again to kick the process off again.

What's next?

If you aren't yet familiar with the power of Netdata Cloud's visualization features, check out the Nodes view and learn how to build new dashboards.