Perspectives Common Pitfalls and Quirks

Products

• CloudHealth

Issue/Introduction

This article covers the recommended best practices and common oddities/quirks of the perspectives tool.  It will cover subjects from group limits to budget integration.

CloudHealth Perspectives are “lenses” through which to view infrastructure.  They provide a framework for categorizing all the assets within your infrastructure.

However, building perspectives can be complicated.  This document will focus on common pitfalls during perspective creation.

Resolution

Common Pitfalls

The double filter group (dynamic)

It is recommended that empty groups are cleaned up and removed from created perspectives.  Not only does this remove clutter, but it also allows for better performance as perspectives are very resource intensive.  One quick way to check for empty groups is by performing a simple ctrl + f command searching for ‘assets 0’.  This will highlight each empty group as well as give the count.  To remove these groups, simply click the broom icon to begin cleanup at the top of the group list.  Be advised that not all empty groups may be removed.  The automated cleanup process will not remove empty dynamic groups that have more than one filter tied to them.

Group names with commas

Group can be given custom names.  This means that special characters, like commas, can be used.  However, a name with a comma can cause issues when switching between selected y-axis tabs on an interactive report.  The comma can break platform formatting leading to duplicate double quotes around the group name each time you switch tabs. This is also known to break the downloadable .csv formatting as well.  Below is an example of what may occur:

 

 

The only workaround for this is to rename the group without the comma.

Empty group names in custom perspective budget

Within the budget tool the ability to create balances for each individual perspective group of their choosing is available.  When selecting a group, the platform backend links the group ID to the budget name field to keep things in sync.  For example, if a group name is changed, the linked budget name field will get automatically updated.  Be advised that if the a group or perspective is deleted the budget linkage is broken resulting in empty/blank group names.

 

Group limits and assets not allocated

In a dynamic environment, perspectives will create a new group when coming across a new tag value.  This isn’t the case when the group limit is met (all perspectives come with a set group limit).  Instead, all new unique value assets will be categorized into "Assets Not Allocated" (ANA).  Perspective group limits can be increased if there are no performance implications.  If a perspective group limit is increased, the perspective will begin categorizing these ANA assets that originally met one of the rules as expected.

 

Tag your assets!

Perspectives are dependent on assets being tagged effectively.  Even with tagged assets, if can be difficult to get create a comprehensive perspective if tagging is loose/unstructured.  For example, the tag ‘CaseSensitive’ is unique from the tag ‘casesensitive’ even though they are the same word due to capitalization differences.  Having many different versions of the same tag can create a difficult environment to work in as many assets may be missed or improperly categorized.  It is always recommended to implement strict tagging guidelines to make this process cleaner and easier.