How to create a simple CPU usage graph?

[gornication (Oleg)]

Hi!
How to create a simple CPU usage graph?
I have incoming records with CPU metrics. Using the cpu_p field, I want to plot the load percentage versus time.

Why do I need Break down by? (this is a required parameter)
What are dotted lines?
What are these numbers (0.1; 0.2, etc.) in front of the percentages? Where did the 8 more values on the graph come from? Are these the most popular cpu_p field values and how often they occur as a percentage?

I just need to arrange the cpu_p values along the time axis. It seems like a very simple task, but I have to ask here about it. The only difficulty is that the values are in fractions of one. That is:
cpu_p: 0,217 - 21,7%
cpu_p: 0,3 - 30%
..and so on.

[stephenb (Stephen Brown)]

Hi @gornication Welcome to the community.

X Axis looks good

Y-Axit Just for Average(cpu_p)

Then look at appearance and set format to Percent

You do not need to do a breakdown if you have more than 1 VM / host etc...

Otherwise, it will be the average of all the hosts if you only have 1 then you don't need to breakdown.

Perhaps take a look at

Create visualizations with Lens | Kibana Guide [8.9] | Elastic

[gornication (Oleg)]

Thanks for the answer, @stephenb
The Break down by field was left empty. I chose Average and Percent value format. The result is like this:

23.76% is apparently the last value of the cpu_p field. These values are not shown on the graph...

[stephenb (Stephen Brown)]

You will may to look at the actual data then....

Some questions and things you can try.

What version of Kibana?

What type of Visualization is that? Area , stacked area...

please try Line with x-axis date histogram change no settings
Then just average CPU and percent

Click on that 2nd Viz on the bottom row.

Also please show everything you set ... When you only show a a part it's very hard for us to debug.

show the viz type, the x -axis
Did you change any values on the date? Histogram?

Can you just delete it and start over?

Something odd that is going on ..

You can also try a table
Make the row the day and the metric the average CPU and then we can see the values

Show all like this

[gornication (Oleg)]

v 7.14.0
Chart type is Area percentage.
Average + cpu_p + Percent - I already tried this above. I tried again, the result did not change.
What is 2nd Viz?
Did you change any values on the date? Histogram? - sorry, I don't understand the question.
What exactly should I delete? Visualization lens? It is possible, but this does not change the result.
Hm, indeed. If I use a line, the graph looks like what I would like:

This is not exactly what I want, since the vertical axis changes the maximum value, which is why the graph is not so clear. I would like it to always be 100%.
Is it possible to make it change color as it gets closer to 100%?

[Marco_Liberati]

It is possible to fix the Axis extents via the Axis setting, and configuring a custom extent:

The "Percentage" chart types (Bar vertical/Bar Horizontal/Area Percentage) is not what you are looking for (even tho it sounds familiar): these chart types are useful to find the percentage distribution when absolute values change over time, for instance.
If you sell 5 products A and 4 products B at t0, 5 A and 10 B at t1, you might want to know the trend of each product, ignoring the abs values, and that's where the Percentage charts excels.

In your case the value to show is just a simple "usage" one and unless you are registering also the idle part, it makes no sense to show a Percentage chart, but rather a simple chart with the Percentage formatting option.

[gornication (Oleg)]

You're probably right, but I don't know what Percentage chart or simple chart with the Percentage formatting option is and what the difference is between them.

[Marco_Liberati]

Vertical/Horizontal bar percentage are meant to be used to show proportion trends.
Non percentage versions are meant to show absolute values.

[gornication (Oleg)]

Bar vertical percentage doesn't show anything as well as Area percentage:

But Line or Area stacked yes.
I understand that I seem to be setting something up wrong, but for now Line is a forced decision for me.

[stephenb (Stephen Brown)]

Bar and Area Percentage Graphs are not the correct types when you have percent data.

These graphs are used to show what percentage of the whole some value is.... The total always equals 100%.

Example say your data that looks like this.

First bucket

A = 7
B = 3

The bar Show A = 70% and B= 30%, Total Bar = 100%

Say the next bucket is

A = 1
B = 4

The bar Show A = 20% and B= 80%, Total Bar = 100%

When you have percent data like CPU percent, these are not the correct graphs.