How to Create a Dashboard in OpenSearch

Introduction

OpenSearch is an open-source search and analytics suite that originated as a fork of Elasticsearch and Kibana. It supports real-time data ingestion, advanced querying, and robust security, making it ideal for e-commerce, IT monitoring, and finance applications. With features like SQL query support, machine learning, and alerting, OpenSearch continuously evolves through active community development.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn the basics of creating a dashboard using the Dashboard application and OpenSearch sample data. The sample dataset includes existing visualizations, which you can use or modify to create new ones. By the end of this tutorial, you’ll have mastered the foundations of creating a new dashboard with multiple panels in OpenSearch Dashboards.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have:

• A DigitalOcean account with access to Managed OpenSearch.
• Basic knowledge of OpenSearch and data visualization concepts.
• Access to the OpenSearch Dashboard.

Most Common Use Cases of OpenSearch Dashboard

The Dashboard application in OpenSearch Dashboards allows you to represent analytical, operational, and strategic data visually, providing a quick understanding of trends and key metrics, simplifying data exploration, and delivering timely insights.

Here are three use cases for dashboards in OpenSearch:

1. E-commerce Sales Monitoring:
   • Create a dashboard to track real-time sales metrics, including total revenue, average order value, and conversion rates.
   • Visualize customer behavior, such as cart abandonment rates and product popularity, to optimize marketing strategies.
   • Use alerts to notify the team of significant changes in sales patterns, helping to address any issues quickly.
2. IT Infrastructure Monitoring:
   • Set up dashboards to monitor server health, network performance, and application uptime across the infrastructure.
   • Visualize key metrics like CPU usage, memory consumption, and network latency to ensure optimal performance.
   • Implement alerts for critical thresholds, enabling rapid response to potential outages or performance degradations.
3. Security Incident Tracking:
   • Create dashboards to monitor and analyze security logs, including login attempts, firewall activity, and intrusion detection alerts.
   • Track suspicious activity patterns in real-time to identify potential security breaches.
   • Use visualization tools to correlate data across multiple sources, enhancing the ability to respond to and mitigate security incidents effectively.

Step 1 - Creating a Managed OpenSearch Database

• To create a managed Open search database, go to the database section of the control panel, and click “Create Database”.

• Choose a “data center/region”.

• Select the desired VPC network from the region (if you have multiple VPCs created).

• Choose “OpenSearch” as the Database engine.

  

• Now, Choose the configuration for the database.

• Open search also supports scale storage. Hence, you can choose the storage size.
• Name database cluster, select your preferred Project, and add tags (if any, optional option)
• Click create Database Cluster.

Step 2 - Creating a dashboard and adding an existing visualization

• Click to OpenSearch Dashboard from the DigitalOcean cloud control panel

• Login to the dashboard with the credentials provided in the cloud panel.

  

• Once you log into OpenSearch, go to OpenSearch “Dashboards > Dashboard” on the top menu.

• From the Dashboards panel, choose “Create Dashboard”.

• Click the calendar icon and set the time filter to Last X days.

• In the panel, choose “Add an existing”.

• In the Add panels window, select Line Avg Bytes over time, then close the panel.

You’ve successfully created a basic dashboard with a single panel, which will be used throughout the rest of this tutorial.

Step 3 - Creating visualization

• Create a New Visualization- From the dashboard toolbar, click “Create new.”
• Select “Gauge/metrics” in the New Visualization window and choose the desired index pattern.
• Save the Visualization- Click “Save” in the toolbar.
• Enter a title like “Metrics count” for the gauge chart panel in the Save Visualization window.
• Click “Save and return.”

The gauge chart visualization is now saved, and you will be redirected back to the dashboard. You should see two visualizations displayed on the dashboard.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You’ve learned how to create and visualize dashboards in a DigitalOcean Managed OpenSearch database. We’ve covered setting up a new dashboard, using sample data, and adding visualizations. With these skills, you can now effectively monitor and analyze your key metrics.