Objects

What is an object?

An object in SquaredUp is an entity that can be described, for example, a server, group, person etc.

Objects are first discovered and indexed in the graph as soon as you connect to a data source that supports object indexing. Data stream links, properties and relationships are created at this point, and subsequently refreshed at interval.

Objects are used for the following purposes:

• To filter your data on dashboard. See Data Tiles.
• To create collections (a collection of objects) that can be re-used across multiple dashboard tile. See Collections.
• To drill down from various places across the product and explore more details about an object and its health:
  • Drilling down to an object from a tile on a dashboard.
  • Using the search.
  • From the data source overview page which gives you a list of all objects and data streams for a data source. See Plugins and Data Sources.
• To enable advanced features such as custom correlations, tags and custom types

Objects and data streams often work together. A data source defines a list of object types to index, as well as a list of relevant data streams. (for example, a CPU for a server or a build duration for a pipeline). See Data Streams.

A canonical is a top level object, our single source, when an object is referenced in more than one data source.

Object properties

When searching you can filter by properties and values, using the format:

property:value

where property is the Internal Property Name and value is a value you wish to find.

Case is significant for some properties, so it's useful to copy the Internal Property Name.

For example, searching for test will show you any object with the word test in its name, searching for type:dash test will only show dashboards with test in their name.

See Search

Object properties are shown when drilling down to an individual object. For example when clicking on a data stream on the left nav bar (such as the AWS data stream), then the Overview tab, then on an object in the objects pane.

The internal property name can be found by hovering over the property name and clicking the copy icon, as shown in this clip.

Collections

What is a collection?

A collection contains objects indexed by data source.

A collection can be used as a filter when configuring dashboard tiles. Collections can be created either manually from the Objects tab on the left-hand pane or on the fly when adding a tile to a dashboard and saved to use with further tiles.

Once you have defined a collection, it's only available in the workspace you created it in so you don't clutter up other workspaces with collections. You can define as many collections as you want.

How to create a collection

Collections can be created from the Objects page with the Add collection button or via the Objects tab when creating / editing a tile.

1. In a workspace, click on Objects in the left hand pane, and then click the Add collection button.
   Alternatively, when creating or editing a tile, you can click the
   next to Collection in the Filter panel on the Objects tab.
2. 1. In the Filter pane you can optionally select the Data source(s),Types and Collections you want to filter by, to help narrow down the object list.
   2. Optionally, click
      Add filter to add properties to the filter list. When you add a filter it adds that property as a column in the object list so you can see the values. You can also do this by clicking the Add column button
      at the top right.
   3. Optionally, you can also use the Search objects box to narrow the list of objects further.

      This uses the same operators as the main search, see Search.

   4. To select the objects you wish to be in the collection you can either tick the objects, or toggle the Dynamic selection button.

      • Fixed selection: Returns the specific objects that you manually pick by ticking them. Objects in a fixed scope never change, except when you edit the collection.
      • Dynamic selection: Enabled by selecting the Dynamic selection toggle this returns all the objects that match the criteria specified in the Filter panel and search. When objects that match are added to or removed from SquaredUp, the objects in the selection will change. Dynamically scoped tiles check which objects match the filter whenever they refresh.

   5. Click Next.
3. Enter a name for the collection and click Save.

Object limits

Collection limits

A collection can contain a maximum of 500 objects. If your collection contains between 100 to 500 objects, a warning message will advise you that the collection is large, which may impact dashboard performance.

If your collection contains 500 or more objects, then the collection will be limited to the first 500 objects in alphabetical order. This hard limit is enforced to ensure that dashboards are able to show visualizations consistently.

When a data source comes with out-of-the-box dashboards, collections are created automatically when adding the data source.

These collections are always dynamic, with a hard limit set by the data source. You can edit these collections to make them work in your environment. Doing so will remove the limit set by the data source so you can refine the collection to meet your needs.

Data stream limits

Depending on the data stream you select when configuring a data tile, certain object limits may be in place.

Typically, this is due to either performance or API limitations. For example, both the WebAPI and PowerShell plugins provide data streams that are limited to a single object and the VMWare vCenter plugin's metrics data streams are limited to ten selected objects.

When selecting objects in the tile editor, you are warned of any object limits in place for the currently selected data stream.

Similarly, dashboard tiles display a prompt of their object limit if exceeded, and are automatically restricted to displaying the first X number of objects, corresponding to the tile's data stream limit.

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