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--- a/docs/guides/using-host-labels.md
+++ b/docs/guides/using-host-labels.md
@@ -1,23 +1,81 @@
-<!--
-title: "Use host labels to organize systems, metrics, and alarms"
-custom_edit_url: https://github.com/netdata/netdata/edit/master/docs/guides/using-host-labels.md
--->
+# Organize systems, metrics, and alerts
-# Use host labels to organize systems, metrics, and alarms
+When you use Netdata to monitor and troubleshoot an entire infrastructure, you need sophisticated ways of keeping everything organized.
+Netdata allows to organize your observability infrastructure with spaces, war rooms, virtual nodes, host labels, and metric labels.
-When you use Netdata to monitor and troubleshoot an entire infrastructure, whether that's dozens or hundreds of systems,
-you need sophisticated ways of keeping everything organized. You need alarms that adapt to the system's purpose, or
-whether the parent or child in a streaming setup. You need properly-labeled metrics archiving so you can sort,
-correlate, and mash-up your data to your heart's content. You need to keep tabs on ephemeral Docker containers in a
-Kubernetes cluster.
+## Spaces and war rooms
-You need **host labels**: a powerful new way of organizing your Netdata-monitored systems. We introduced host labels in
-[v1.20 of Netdata](https://blog.netdata.cloud/posts/release-1.20/), and they come pre-configured out of the box.
+[Spaces](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/blob/master/docs/cloud/spaces.md) are used for organization-level or infrastructure-level
+grouping of nodes and people. A node can only appear in a single space, while people can have access to multiple spaces.
+
+The [war rooms](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/edit/master/docs/cloud/war-rooms.md) in a space bring together nodes and people in
+collaboration areas. War rooms can also be used for fine-tuned
+[role based access control](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/blob/master/docs/cloud/manage/role-based-access.md).
+
+## Virtual nodes
+
+Netdata’s virtual nodes functionality allows you to define nodes in configuration files and have them be treated as regular nodes
+in all of the UI, dashboards, tabs, filters etc. For example, you can create a virtual node each for all your Windows machines
+and monitor them as discrete entities. Virtual nodes can help you simplify your infrastructure monitoring and focus on the
+individual node that matters.
+
+To define your windows server as a virtual node you need to:
+
+ * Define virtual nodes in `/etc/netdata/vnodes/vnodes.conf`
+
+ ```yaml
+ - hostname: win_server1
+ guid: <value>
+ ```
+ Just remember to use a valid guid (On Linux you can use `uuidgen` command to generate one, on Windows just use the `[guid]::NewGuid()` command in PowerShell)
+
+ * Add the vnode config to the data collection job. e.g. in `go.d/windows.conf`:
+ ```yaml
+ jobs:
+ - name: win_server1
+ vnode: win_server1
+ url: http://203.0.113.10:9182/metrics
+ ```
+
+## Host labels
+
+Host labels can be extremely useful when:
+
+- You need alarms that adapt to the system's purpose
+- You need properly-labeled metrics archiving so you can sort, correlate, and mash-up your data to your heart's content.
+- You need to keep tabs on ephemeral Docker containers in a Kubernetes cluster.
Let's take a peek into how to create host labels and apply them across a few of Netdata's features to give you more
organization power over your infrastructure.
-## Create unique host labels
+### Default labels
+
+When Netdata starts, it captures relevant information about the system and converts them into automatically generated
+host labels. You can use these to logically organize your systems via health entities, exporting metrics,
+parent-child status, and more.
+
+They capture the following:
+
+- Kernel version
+- Operating system name and version
+- CPU architecture, system cores, CPU frequency, RAM, and disk space
+- Whether Netdata is running inside of a container, and if so, the OS and hardware details about the container's host
+- Whether Netdata is running inside K8s node
+- What virtualization layer the system runs on top of, if any
+- Whether the system is a streaming parent or child
+
+If you want to organize your systems without manually creating host labels, try the automatic labels in some of the
+features below. You can see them under `http://HOST-IP:19999/api/v1/info`, beginning with an underscore `_`.
+```json
+{
+ ...
+ "host_labels": {
+ "_is_k8s_node": "false",
+ "_is_parent": "false",
+ ...
+```
+
+### Custom labels
Host labels are defined in `netdata.conf`. To create host labels, open that file using `edit-config`.
@@ -68,28 +126,8 @@ read the status of your agent. For example, from a VPS system running Debian 10:
}
```
-You may have noticed a handful of labels that begin with an underscore (`_`). These are automatic labels.
-
-### Automatic labels
-
-When Netdata starts, it captures relevant information about the system and converts them into automatically-generated
-host labels. You can use these to logically organize your systems via health entities, exporting metrics,
-parent-child status, and more.
-
-They capture the following:
-
-- Kernel version
-- Operating system name and version
-- CPU architecture, system cores, CPU frequency, RAM, and disk space
-- Whether Netdata is running inside of a container, and if so, the OS and hardware details about the container's host
-- Whether Netdata is running inside K8s node
-- What virtualization layer the system runs on top of, if any
-- Whether the system is a streaming parent or child
-
-If you want to organize your systems without manually creating host labels, try the automatic labels in some of the
-features below.
-## Host labels in streaming
+### Host labels in streaming
You may have noticed the `_is_parent` and `_is_child` automatic labels from above. Host labels are also now
streamed from a child to its parent node, which concentrates an entire infrastructure's OS, hardware, container,
@@ -108,7 +146,7 @@ child system. It's a vastly simplified way of accessing critical information abo
You can also use `_is_parent`, `_is_child`, and any other host labels in both health entities and metrics
exporting. Speaking of which...
-## Host labels in health entities
+### Host labels in alerts
You can use host labels to logically organize your systems by their type, purpose, or location, and then apply specific
alarms to them.
@@ -156,7 +194,7 @@ Or when ephemeral Docker nodes are involved:
Of course, there are many more possibilities for intuitively organizing your systems with host labels. See the [health
documentation](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/blob/master/health/REFERENCE.md#alarm-line-host-labels) for more details, and then get creative!
-## Host labels in metrics exporting
+### Host labels in metrics exporting
If you have enabled any metrics exporting via our experimental [exporters](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/blob/master/exporting/README.md), any new host
labels you created manually are sent to the destination database alongside metrics. You can change this behavior by
@@ -185,28 +223,31 @@ send automatic labels = yes
By applying labels to exported metrics, you can more easily parse historical metrics with the labels applied. To learn
more about exporting, read the [documentation](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/blob/master/exporting/README.md).
-## What's next?
+## Metric labels
-Host labels are a brand-new feature to Netdata, and yet they've already propagated deeply into some of its core
-functionality. We're just getting started with labels, and will keep the community apprised of additional functionality
-as it's made available. You can also track [issue #6503](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/issues/6503), which is where
-the Netdata team first kicked off this work.
+The Netdata aggregate charts allow you to filter and group metrics based on label name-value pairs.
-It should be noted that while the Netdata dashboard does not expose either user-configured or automatic host labels, API
-queries _do_ showcase this information. As always, we recommend you secure Netdata
+All go.d plugin collectors support the specification of labels at the "collection job" level. Some collectors come with out of the box
+labels (e.g. generic Prometheus collector, Kubernetes, Docker and more). But you can also add your own custom labels, by configuring
+the data collection jobs.
-- [Expose Netdata only in a private LAN](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/blob/master/docs/netdata-security.md#expose-netdata-only-in-a-private-lan)
-- [Enable TLS/SSL for web/API requests](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/blob/master/web/server/README.md#enabling-tls-support)
-- Put Netdata behind a proxy
- - [Use an authenticating web server in proxy
- mode](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/blob/master/docs/netdata-security.md#use-an-authenticating-web-server-in-proxy-mode)
- - [Nginx proxy](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/blob/master/docs/Running-behind-nginx.md)
- - [Apache proxy](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/blob/master/docs/Running-behind-apache.md)
- - [Lighttpd](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/blob/master/docs/Running-behind-lighttpd.md)
- - [Caddy](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/blob/master/docs/Running-behind-caddy.md)
+For example, suppose we have a single Netdata agent, collecting data from two remote Apache web servers, located in different data centers.
+The web servers are load balanced and provide access to the service "Payments".
-If you have issues or questions around using host labels, don't hesitate to [file an
-issue](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/issues/new?assignees=&labels=bug%2Cneeds+triage&template=BUG_REPORT.yml) on GitHub. We're
-excited to make host labels even more valuable to our users, which we can only do with your input.
+You can define the following in `go.d.conf`, to be able to group the web requests by service or location:
+```
+jobs:
+ - name: mywebserver1
+ url: http://host1/server-status?auto
+ labels:
+ service: "Payments"
+ location: "Atlanta"
+ - name: mywebserver2
+ url: http://host2/server-status?auto
+ labels:
+ service: "Payments"
+ location: "New York"
+```
+Of course you may define as many custom label/value pairs as you like, in as many data collection jobs you need.