Microsoft Azure can support a number of dashboards in the Azure portal. Each dashboard will include tiles showing data from different Azure resources across different resource groups and subscriptions. You can also create different dashboards for different teams or clone an existing one.
In the Azure portal, dashboards are a focused and organized view of your cloud resources. You can use dashboards as a workspace where you can monitor resources and launch tasks. The Azure portal provides a default dashboard as a starting point.
Using the Azure Dashboard
Dashboards provide a focused view of the resources in your subscription. When you first use Azure, you will be provided with a default dashboard. You can customize this dashboard to allow you to view only those resources that are most important to you. Changes that you make to the default view will affect your experience only. You can create other dashboards for your own use, or publish customized dashboards to be shared with other users within your organization.
Each user can create up to 100 private dashboards. If you publish and share the dashboard, it will be implemented as an Azure resource in your subscription and will not count toward this limit.
Exercise 9.1 will show you how to create a new private dashboard using an assigned name. All dashboards are private when they are created, but you can choose to publish and share the dashboard with other users.
EXERCISE 9.1
Creating a New Dashboard
- Sign into the Azure portal: http://portal.azure.com.
- From the Azure portal menu, select Dashboard (see Figure 9.1). The default view may be already set.
EXERCISE 9.1 (continued)
3. Select New Dashboard, then select Blank Dashboard (see Figure 9.2). This will open the Tile Gallery. Here you can select tiles and arrange those tiles onto an empty grid to design it how you’d like.
4. Select the My Dashboard text (see Figure 9.3) in the dashboard label and enter a name to identify the custom dashboard.
FIGURE 9.3 Naming the new Azure dashboard
5. To save the dashboard as is, on the page header, select Done Customizing.
The dashboard view will now show your new dashboard. Select the arrow next to the dashboard name to see your available dashboards. The list might include dashboards that other users have created and shared.
Next, you can edit a dashboard. This will give you the ability to add, resize, and arrange the tiles to suit your needs. Exercise 9.2 will show you how to add tiles to a dashboard from the Tile Gallery.
EXERCISE 9.2
Adding Tiles from the Tile Gallery
- Select Edit from the dashboard’s page header (see Figure 9.4).
FIGURE 9.4 Edit Dashboard
EXERCISE 9.2 (continued)
2. Browse the Tile Gallery to find a certain tile, or you can use the search field (see Figure 9.5). Then, select the tile you want to be added to your dashboard.
FIGURE 9.5 Tile Gallery
3. Click Add to add the tile to the dashboard with a default size and location, or you can drag the tile to the grid and place it where you want.
4. If desired, resize or rearrange your tiles.
5. To save your changes, click Save in the page header (see Figure 9.6). You can also choose to preview the changes without saving by selecting the Preview button. This allows you to see how filters affect your tiles. From the preview screen, if you like the changes you’ve made, you can select Save to keep the changes. If you do not care for the changes, you can click Discard to remove them, or click Edit to go back to the editing options and make further changes.