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+<!--
+title: "Step 2. Get to know Netdata's dashboard"
+date: 2020-05-04
+custom_edit_url: https://github.com/netdata/netdata/edit/master/docs/guides/step-by-step/step-02.md
+-->
+
+# Step 2. Get to know Netdata's dashboard
+
+Welcome to Netdata proper! Now that you understand how Netdata works, how it's built, and why we built it, you can start
+working with the dashboard directly.
+
+This step-by-step guide assumes you've already installed Netdata on a system of yours. If you haven't yet, hop back over
+to ["step 0"](step-00.md#before-we-get-started) for information about our one-line installer script. Or, view the
+[installation docs](/packaging/installer/README.md) to learn more. Once you have Netdata installed, you can hop back
+over here and dig in.
+
+## What you'll learn in this step
+
+In this step of the Netdata guide, you'll learn how to:
+
+- [Visit and explore the dashboard](#visit-and-explore-the-dashboard)
+- [Explore available charts using menus](#explore-available-charts-using-menus)
+- [Read the descriptions accompanying charts](#read-the-descriptions-accompanying-charts)
+- [Interact with charts](#interact-with-charts)
+- [See raised alarms and the alarm log](#see-raised-alarms-and-the-alarm-log)
+
+Let's get started!
+
+## Visit and explore the dashboard
+
+Netdata's dashboard is where you interact with your system's metrics. Time to open it up and start exploring. Open up
+your browser of choice.
+
+Open up your web browser of choice and navigate to `http://NODE:19999`, replacing `NODE` with the IP address or hostname
+of your Agent. If you're unsure, try `http://localhost:19999` first. Hit **Enter**. Welcome to Netdata!
+
+![Animated GIF of navigating to the
+dashboard](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1153921/80825153-abaec600-8b94-11ea-8b17-1b770a2abaa9.gif)
+
+> From here on out in this guide, we'll refer to the address you use to view your dashboard as `NODE`. Be sure to
+> replace it with either `localhost`, the IP address, or the hostname of your system.
+
+## Explore available charts using menus
+
+**Menus** are located on the right-hand side of the Netdata dashboard. You can use these to navigate to the
+charts you're interested in.
+
+![Animated GIF of using the menus and
+submenus](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1153921/80832425-7c528600-8ba1-11ea-8140-d0a17a62009b.gif)
+
+Netdata shows all its charts on a single page, so you can also scroll up and down using the mouse wheel, your
+touchscreen/touchpad, or the scrollbar.
+
+Both menus and the items displayed beneath them, called **submenus**, are populated automatically by Netdata based on
+what it's collecting. If you run Netdata on many different systems using different OS types or versions, the
+menus and submenus may look a little different for each one.
+
+To learn more about menus, see our documentation about [navigating the standard
+dashboard](/web/gui/README.md#metrics-menus).
+
+> ❗ By default, Netdata only creates and displays charts if the metrics are _not zero_. So, you may be missing some
+> charts, menus, and submenus if those charts have zero metrics. You can change this by changing the **Which dimensions
+> to show?** setting to **All**. In addition, if you start Netdata and immediately load the dashboard, not all
+> charts/menus/submenus may be displayed, as some collectors can take a while to initialize.
+
+## Read the descriptions accompanying charts
+
+Many charts come with a short description of what dimensions the chart is displaying and why they matter.
+
+For example, here's the description that accompanies the **swap** chart.
+
+![Screenshot of the swap
+description](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1153921/63452078-477b1600-c3fa-11e9-836b-2fc90fba8b4b.png)
+
+If you're new to health monitoring and performance troubleshooting, we recommend you spend some time reading these
+descriptions and learning more at the pages linked above.
+
+## Understand charts, dimensions, families, and contexts
+
+A **chart** is an interactive visualization of one or more collected/calculated metrics. You can see the name (also
+known as its unique ID) of a chart by looking at the top-left corner of a chart and finding the parenthesized text. On a
+Linux system, one of the first charts on the dashboard will be the system CPU chart, with the name `system.cpu`:
+
+![Screenshot of the system CPU chart in the Netdata
+dashboard](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1153921/67443082-43b16e80-f5b8-11e9-8d33-d6ee052c6678.png)
+
+A **dimension** is any value that gets shown on a chart. The value can be raw data or calculated values, such as
+percentages, aggregates, and more. Most charts will have more than one dimension, in which case it will display each in
+a different color. Here, a `system.cpu` chart is showing many dimensions, such as `user`, `system`, `softirq`, `irq`,
+and more.
+
+![Screenshot of the dimensions shown in the system CPU chart in the Netdata
+dashboard](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1153921/62721031-2bba4d80-b9c0-11e9-9dca-32403617ce72.png)
+
+A **family** is _one_ instance of a monitored hardware or software resource that needs to be monitored and displayed
+separately from similar instances. For example, if your system has multiple partitions, Netdata will create different
+families for `/`, `/boot`, `/home`, and so on. Same goes for entire disks, network devices, and more.
+
+![A number of families created for disk partitions](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1153921/67896952-a788e980-fb1a-11e9-880b-2dfb3945c8d6.png)
+
+A **context** groups several charts based on the types of metrics being collected and displayed. For example, the
+**Disk** section often has many contexts: `disk.io`, `disk.ops`, `disk.backlog`, `disk.util`, and so on. Netdata uses
+this context to create individual charts and then groups them by family. You can always see the context of any chart by
+looking at its name or hovering over the chart's date.
+
+It's important to understand these differences, as Netdata uses charts, dimensions, families, and contexts to create
+health alarms and configure collectors. To read even more about the differences between all these elements of the
+dashboard, and how they affect other parts of Netdata, read our [dashboards
+documentation](/web/README.md#charts-contexts-families).
+
+## Interact with charts
+
+We built Netdata to be a big sandbox for learning more about your systems and applications. Time to play!
+
+Netdata's charts are fully interactive. You can pan through historical metrics, zoom in and out, select specific
+timeframes for further analysis, resize charts, and more.
+
+Best of all, Whenever you use a chart in this way, Netdata synchronizes all the other charts to match it.
+
+![Animated GIF of the standard Netdata dashboard being manipulated and synchronizing
+charts](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1153921/81867875-3d6beb00-9526-11ea-94b8-388951e2e03d.gif)
+
+### Pan, zoom, highlight, and reset charts
+
+You can change how charts show their metrics in a few different ways, each of which have a few methods:
+
+| Change | Method #1 | Method #2 | Method #3 |
+| ------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------- |
+| **Reset** charts to default auto-refreshing state | `double click` | `double tap` (touchpad/touchscreen) | |
+| **Select** a certain timeframe | `ALT` + `mouse selection` | `⌘` + `mouse selection` (macOS) | |
+| **Pan** forward or back in time | `click and drag` | `touch and drag` (touchpad/touchscreen) | |
+| **Zoom** to a specific timeframe | `SHIFT` + `mouse selection` | | |
+| **Zoom** in/out | `SHIFT`/`ALT` + `mouse scrollwheel` | `SHIFT`/`ALT` + `two-finger pinch` (touchpad/touchscreen) | `SHIFT`/`ALT` + `two-finger scroll` (touchpad/touchscreen) |
+
+These interactions can also be triggered using the icons on the bottom-right corner of every chart. They are,
+respectively, `Pan Left`, `Reset`, `Pan Right`, `Zoom In`, and `Zoom Out`.
+
+### Show and hide dimensions
+
+Each dimension can be hidden by clicking on it. Hiding dimensions simplifies the chart and can help you better discover
+exactly which aspect of your system is behaving strangely.
+
+### Resize charts
+
+Additionally, resize charts by clicking-and-dragging the icon on the bottom-right corner of any chart. To restore the
+chart to its original height, double-click the same icon.
+
+![Animated GIF of resizing a chart and resetting it to the default
+height](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1153921/80842459-7d41e280-8bb6-11ea-9488-1bc29f94d7f2.gif)
+
+To learn more about other options and chart interactivity, read our [dashboard documentation](/web/README.md).
+
+## See raised alarms and the alarm log
+
+Aside from performance troubleshooting, the Agent helps you monitor the health of your systems and applications. That's
+why every Netdata installation comes with dozens of pre-configured alarms that trigger alerts when your system starts
+acting strangely.
+
+Find the **Alarms** button in the top navigation bring up a modal that shows currently raised alarms, all running
+alarms, and the alarms log.
+
+Here is an example of a raised `system.cpu` alarm, followed by the full list and alarm log:
+
+![Animated GIF of looking at raised alarms and the alarm
+log](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1153921/80842482-8c289500-8bb6-11ea-9791-600cfdbe82ce.gif)
+
+And a static screenshot of the raised CPU alarm:
+
+![Screenshot of a raised system CPU alarm](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1153921/80842330-2dfbb200-8bb6-11ea-8147-3cd366eb0f37.png)
+
+The alarm itself is named *system - cpu**, and its context is `system.cpu`. Beneath that is an auto-updating badge that
+shows the latest value the chart that triggered the alarm.
+
+With the three icons beneath that and the **role** designation, you can:
+
+1. Scroll to the chart associated with this raised alarm.
+2. Copy a link to the badge to your clipboard.
+3. Copy the code to embed the badge onto another web page using an `<embed>` element.
+
+The table on the right-hand side displays information about the alarm's configuration. In above example, Netdata
+triggers a warning alarm when CPU usage is between 75 and 85%, and a critical alarm when above 85%. It's a _little_ more
+complicated than that, but we'll get into more complex health entity configurations in a later step.
+
+The `calculation` field is the equation used to calculate those percentages, and the `check every` field specifies how
+often Netdata should be calculating these metrics to see if the alarm should remain triggered.
+
+The `execute` field tells Netdata how to notify you about this alarm, and the `source` field lets you know where you can
+find the configuration file, if you'd like to edit its configuration.
+
+We'll cover alarm configuration in more detail later in the guide, so don't worry about it too much for now! Right
+now, it's most important that you understand how to see alarms, and parse their details, if and when they appear on your
+system.
+
+## What's next?
+
+In this step of the Netdata guide, you learned how to:
+
+- Visit the dashboard
+- Explore available charts (using the right-side menu)
+- Read the descriptions accompanying charts
+- Interact with charts
+- See raised alarms and the alarm log
+
+Next, you'll learn how to monitor multiple nodes through the dashboard.
+
+[Next: Monitor more than one system with Netdata →](step-03.md)
+
+[![analytics](https://www.google-analytics.com/collect?v=1&aip=1&t=pageview&_s=1&ds=github&dr=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fnetdata%2Fnetdata&dl=https%3A%2F%2Fmy-netdata.io%2Fgithub%2Fdocs%2Fguides%2Fstep-by-step%2Fstep-02&_u=MAC~&cid=5792dfd7-8dc4-476b-af31-da2fdb9f93d2&tid=UA-64295674-3)](<>)