

Real-time server visualization with canvas and processing.js - polvi
https://www.cloudkick.com/blog/2010/apr/27/cloudkick_server_visualization_in_html5_canvas/

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smiler
It looks cool but it's not actually any more usable than just a table /
gridview list...

Consider :-

1\. A list can quickly be filtered to show only critical state servers - I
probably don't care about servers which aren't doing anything

2\. If I want to look for a specific server - I have _no_ idea which one it is
- I have to click to find it. A grid means I can look for it instantly

3\. The info being displayed takes a while to digest as to what I'm seeing on
the 3d axes with regards to ping etc... A grid just gives me the numbers and I
can read them quickly.

Yet again a use of pretty graphics where it really isn't needed

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tripngroove
Disclaimer: I work at Cloudkick.

Imagine looking at a list of 500 servers and trying to determine how their
aggregate memory usage was trending in real-time.

To quickly address your concerns:

1\. Servers that are critical turn red and blink - there's no need to filter
anything since your eyes have already done it.

2\. This tool isn't really designed to be a gateway to arbitrary servers; it's
showing you anomalies, problems, and aggregate trending.

3\. I think this could be a fair point, but with only 3 (clearly labeled)
axes, I think it's hard to suggest that the learning curve for digestion the
information is incredibly steep. If you actually think how it's set up at the
moment is too confusing, I'd love to hear suggestions.

We leave this up on the big screen at the office and it makes it very easy to
tell when something untoward is happening with our servers, without really
having to devote direct attention to the visualization. We designed it so
problems stand out and make themselves known to you.

One of our guiding principles is to move quickly and take user feedback
though, so if you've got any constructive criticism, let's keep the discussion
going!!!

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eirikref
I'm looking at the Mozilla example on my laptop without a mouse, and I get a
little bit annoyed when I'm hovering a certain node trying to click on it and
the visualization keeps on moving and makes it hard to click on it. So maybe
it could be possible to have a simple option to freeze the view?

And maybe an easy way of instantly changing to some near optimal viewpoint for
viewing the data in terms of a given axis? (Ie. CPU or memory usage).

But this, combined with normal alerts would be cool. Oh, and what about
showing trace lines once I've selected a given node? :)

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msy
Neat tech, terrible interface - utterly pointless. Flat graphs, which are
configured to show outliers/only problematic nodes would provide a far more
efficient interface to someone trying to work out where the bottlenecks and
issues are. Showing lots of data for the sake of it might be pretty but it's
not helpful, choosing what to present is an important part of the
visualisation development process as how it is presented.

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axod
It looks like it was fun to make, but I can't see how it's particularly
useful. I can't see anything useful in a 3D visualization like that.

> "and it's the first cloud monitoring system in the world that you can watch
> in real-time as it checks your servers."

Yeah Cacti does that with an HTTP refresh every few seconds. 'realtime' enough
for most instances.

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Greenisus
I saw this a while back at the sfcloudhackers hack day; simply amazing.

