Heatmap Widget

The Heatmap widget contains graphical indicators that display the current value of two selected attributes of objects of tag values that you select. In most cases, you can select only from internally generated attributes that describe the general operation of the objects, such as health or the active anomaly count. When you select a single object, you can select any metric for that object.

How the Heatmap Widget and Configuration Options Work

You can add the Heatmap widget to one or more custom dashboards and configure it to display data that is important to the dashboard users.

The Heatmap widget has a General mode and an Instance mode. The General mode shows a colored rectangle for each selected resource. In the Instance mode, each rectangle represents a single instance of the selected metric for an object.

You can click a color or the size metric box in the bottom of the Heatmap widget to filter the display of cells in the widget. You can click and drag the color filter to select a range of colors. The Heatmap widget displays cells that match the range of colors.

When you point to a rectangle for an object, the widget shows the resource name, group-by values, the current values of the two tracked attributes, virtual machine details, the metric name, and the value of the color. Click Show Sparkline to view the value.

You edit a Heatmap widget after you add it to a dashboard. The changes you make to the options create a custom widget that provides information about an individual object, a custom group of objects, or all the objects in your environment.

Where You Find the Heatmap Widget

The widget might be included on any of your custom dashboards. From the left menu, click Visualize > Dashboards to see your configured dashboards.

To customize the data that appears in the dashboard widget, from the left menu, click Visualize > Dashboards. To create your dashboard, from the left menu, click Visualize > Dashboards. From the Dashboards panel, click Create. To edit your dashboard, from the left menu, click Visualize > Dashboards. From the Dashboards panel, select the dashboard you want to edit and select Actions > Edit. Toggle between the Views and Widgets option to view and add a widget or view to the dashboard. The widgets list panel displays a list of all the predefined widgets. Drag a widget to the dashboard workspace in the upper panel.

Heatmap Widget Toolbar Options

On the title bar of the widget, click the Show Toolbar icon to access the toolbar options.

Option	Description
Dashboard Navigation	Actions you can run on the selected alert. For example, you use the option to open a vCenter Server, data center, virtual machine, or in the vSphere Web Client, allowing you to directly modify an object for which an alert was generated and fix any problems.
Group Zoom	You can roll-up non-significant resources with similar characteristics into groups to obtain only the relevant data among the thousands of resources in the system. The roll-up method improves performance and decreases the memory usage. The roll-up box encompasses the average color and the sum of the sizes of all the resources. You can view all the resources by zooming in the roll-up box.
Show/Hide Text	Show or hide the cell name on the heatmap rectangle.
Show Details	If you configure the Heatmap widget as a provider to another widget, such as the Metric Chart widget , you can double-click a rectangle to select that object for the widget. If the widget is in Metric mode, double-clicking a rectangle selects the resource associated with the metric and provides that resource to the receiving widget. Optionally, you can select a cell from the heatmap and click the Show Details icon to see details about the cell.
Reset Interaction	Returns the widget to its initial configured state and undoes any interactions selected in a providing widget.
Reset Zoom	Resets the heatmap display to fit in the available space.
Heatmap Configuration Drop-down	Select from a list of predefined heatmaps.

Heatmap Widget Configuration Options

On the title bar of the widget, click the Edit Widget icon to configure the widget.

The configuration options are grouped into one or more sections. You can select the objects on which you want to base the widget data and refine the objects in the following sections. Each section filters the objects further and pushes the filtered objects to the next section. The widget data is based on the objects that are the output of the last section.

The Configuration section provides general configuration options for the widget.

The Input Data section provides options to specify input for the widget. This section appears when the widget is in self provider mode.

The Input Transformation section provides options to transform the input for the widget.

The Output Data section provides options to select object types on which you are basing the widget data.

The Output Filter section provides options to restrict the widget data based on the selected filter criteria.

Option	Description
Title	Enter a custom title that identifies this widget from other instances that are based on the same widget template.
Configuration
Refresh Content	Activate or deactivate the automatic refreshing of the data in this widget.
Refresh Interval	If you activate the Refresh Content option, specify how often to refresh the data in this widget.
Self Provider	Indicates whether the objects for which data appears in the widget are defined in the widget or provided by another widget. On. You define the objects for which data appears in the widget. Off. You configure other widgets to provide the objects to the widget using the dashboard widget interactions options.
Input Data
Objects	Select objects on which you want to base the widget data. Click the Add New Objects icon and select objects in the pop-up window. The selected objects appear in a list in this section. While selecting objects, you can use the Filter text box to search for objects. You can also expand the Tag Filter pane on the left hand side to select one or more object tag values. A list of objects with the selected tag values appears. If you select more than one value for the same tag, you can choose objects that have any of the tags applied. If you select more than one value for different tags, you can choose only the objects that have all the tags applied. Optionally, select objects from the list and click the Remove Selected Objects icon to remove the selected objects. Click the Select All icon to select all the objects in the list. Click the Clear Selection icon to clear your selection of objects in the list.
All	If you select this option, the widget data is based on all the objects in your environment. The following sections provide options to refine the objects for the widget data.
Input Transformation
Relationship	Transform the input for the widget based on the relationship of the objects. For example, if you select the Children check box and a Depth of 1, the child objects are the transformed inputs for the widget.
Output Data
Configurations	List of saved heatmap configuration options. You can create a configuration and save it in the list. From the options on the right, you can also delete, clone, and reorder the configurations.
Name	Name of the widget.
Group by	First-level grouping of the objects in the heatmap.
Then by	Second-level grouping of the objects in the heatmap.
Relational Grouping	After you select the Group by and Then by objects, select the Relational Grouping check box to reorganize the grouping of the objects, and to relate the objects selected in the Group by text box with the objects selected in the Then by text box.
Mode	General mode The widget shows a colored rectangle for each selected resource. The size of the rectangle indicates the value of one selected attribute. The color of the rectangle indicates the value of another selected attribute. Instance mode Each rectangle represents a single instance of the selected metric for a resource. A resource can have multiple instances of the same metric. The rectangles are all the same size. The color of the rectangles varies based on the instance value. You can use instance mode only if you select a single resource kind.
Object Type	Object that is the basis for the widget data.
Size by	An attribute to set the size of the rectangle for each resource. Resources that have higher values for the Size By attribute have larger areas of the widget display. You can also select fixed-size rectangles. In most cases, the attribute lists include only metrics that VMware Aria Operations generates. If you select a resource kind, the list shows all the attributes that are defined for the resource kind.
Color by	An attribute to set the color of the rectangle for each resource.
Solid Coloring	Select this option to use solid colors instead of a color gradient. By default, the widget assigns red color for high value, brown color for intermediate value and green color for low value. Click the color box to set a different color for the values. You can add up to seven color thresholds by clicking color range.
Color	Shows the color range for high, intermediate and low values. You can set each color and type minimum and maximum color values in the Min Value and Max Value text boxes. By default, green indicates a low value and red indicates the high end of the value range. You can change the high and low values to any color and set the color to use for the midpoint of the range. You can also set the values to use for either end of the color range, or let VMware Aria Operations define the colors based on the range of values for the attribute. If you leave the text boxes blank, VMware Aria Operations maps the highest and lowest values for the Color By metric to the end colors. If you set a minimum or maximum value, any metric at or beyond that value appears in the end color.
Output Filter
Basic	Pick tags to refine the widget data. The widget data is based on the objects that have the picked tags applied. If you pick more than one value for the same tag, the widget includes objects that have any of the tags applied. If you pick more than one value for different tags, the widget includes only the objects that have all the tags applied. If the objects have an input transformation applied, you select tag values for the transformed objects.
Advanced	Refine the widget data further based on the filter criteria for object types. The widget data is based on the objects for the filtered object types. If the objects have a tag filter applied in the Basic subsection, you define filter criteria for the object types of the objects with tag filter applied. If the objects with tag filter applied do not belong to any of the object types in this filter criteria, the widget skips this filter and includes all the objects with tag filter applied. If the objects have an input transformation applied, you define filter criteria for the object types of the transformed objects. In the first drop-down menu, select an object type. In the second drop-down menu, select the option based on which you want to define the filter criteria. For example, if you select Metrics for the Datacenter object type, you can define a filter criteria based on the value of a specific metric for data centers. In the drop-down menus and text boxes that appear, select or enter values to filter the objects. To add more filter criteria, click Add. To add another filter criteria set, click Add another criteria set.