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Overview

Report filtering lets you narrow chart and table results to just the entities and data that matter for a specific analysis. By applying entity, data, and pattern-based filters, you can control which entities appear or don’t appear, which metrics are included in calculations, and how properties such as names or tags are matched, so that reports stay focused, performant, and easy to interpret.

Entity filtering

Entity Filtering enables precise control over data aggregation in charts that display multiple entities, such as Top N charts.You can select which specific entities, related to a chart entity, will contribute data to the displayed metrics and calculations.

Once an entity is filtered, all its associated data attributes are used in the aggregation; for instance, filtering by a single application will aggregate data from all related switch ports associated with that application.

Access Entity Filtering

Use entity filters to control which entities appear in a chart and to aggregate data only for those entities.

Configure the chart

• Open the chart configuration and set the basic parameters on the Chart Data tab.

Entity filter options

Entity filter options let you control which entities appear in a chart by including, excluding, relating, or property-matching specific entities.

With property matching conditions

Pattern-based filters add four new With property conditions that let you include or exclude entities based on whether a property value matches a specified text pattern. These conditions support optional case sensitivity and wildcard matching for text-based properties, such as Name. The new pattern-matching conditions are available wherever existing filter controls are used, including charts, report filter dialogs, rule create and update pages, and other filtering interfaces.

Pattern-based filters let you match entity properties using wildcard text patterns so they can quickly include or exclude groups of items whose names follow a common pattern.

You can refined the filter with pattern-based conditions:

Data filtering

Data filtering limits the metric calculation to specific entities and their data, instead of using all related entities.

• In charts, only the selected entity and metric are included in the aggregation (for example, one application using data from two specific switch ports).

• Data filtering is available on all charts, and on Top N charts only when a binding exists between the entity type and the chosen metric (for example, Switch Port–Consumed Bandwidth).

• To add a data filter, select the + icon in the chart and choose Filter Entities for Metric Calculation (Advanced).

Table 211. Data Filter

Option	Description
In this list	Include metric data only from the named entities or report variable values you select.
Not in this list	Include metric data only from entities that are not in the specified list; you can also use a report variable.
Related to	Include metric data only from entities that have a defined relationship to the chart’s primary entity, optionally driven by a report variable.
With property	Include metric data only from entities whose system properties or tags match the specified value (for example, applications in the Platinum tier).

Filter Metrics

The Filter Metric lets you include or exclude entities based on their metric values over a selected time range. Use this filter when you want reports to return only entities that meet a specific condition - for example, volumes where Read IOPS = 0 and Write IOPS = 0.

Why use Filter Metric

When you use Top N or Bottom N charts, the system ranks entities based on their metric values. Top N displays the entities with the highest metric values, while Bottom N displays the entities with the lowest metric values within the specified limit. Bottom N ranks results comparatively and does not filter by value; therefore, the returned entities may include non-zero metric values.

The Filter Metric resolves this limitation by applying an explicit condition to a metric, such as equals 0, ensuring accurate results.

Note

• Top N and Bottom N charts rank entities based on metric values, but do not guarantee that only entities with exact zero values are returned.

  To explicitly include or exclude entities based on metric values, apply a Filter Metric.

  Filter Metrics are evaluated using the aggregated metric value calculated for the selected time range (for example, Average, Maximum, or Minimum, depending on the metric definition).

  The filter does not evaluate individual time-series data points. As a result, entities are included or excluded based on the aggregated value, not on whether any single data point meets the filter condition.

Configure the Metric Filter

Follow these steps to apply a Filter Metric to a report:

1. From the Report page, click Add New Report and select Trends.

2. Open the chart configuration and set the basic parameters on the Chart Data tab.

3. Set Show the to Top or Bottom.

4. Enter the number of entities to display (for example, 1–50).

5. Select the Data Type.

6. Under By, choose a metric.

7. In the chart area, click the + icon and select Filter Metric.

8. Add a filter for the required metric (for example, Read IOPS or Write IOPS).

9. Set the condition, enter the value, and apply the filter.

   Example 2. Display Volumes with Zero I/O Activity

   In this example, the chart is configured to display volumes with no I/O activity:

   • Under By, select Read IOPS or Write IOPS.

   • Add filters for:

     • Average Read IOPS = 0

     • Average Write IOPS = 0

     With these filters applied, only volumes with zero average read and write IOPS are included in the chart.

   
   
   

Note

• Line charts display filtered values exactly (for example, 0 IOPS).

• Trend charts average data across time intervals, so values may appear slightly different.

Report variables are defined at the report level but used to filter charts. Report variables can be created at any time to an existing report or added when creating a new report.

Some chart types do not allow for use of variables with the primary data selection because you do not select specific entities. An example would the Top N Chart. However, you can still use variables in metric filters for charts, to create relationships in any chart type that allows filtering.

If your report includes chart types that do not specify entities (such as Top N Chart), those charts are not affected by use of a variable on other charts in the report.

You can add multiple variables to a report and associate the variables with various entity types.

Changing Report Variables Using a URL

You can change the entity value for a report template variable either from the variable field on the report page, or by passing the entity name in a URL.

Prerequisites

Steps

Example 3. Example: Using a URL to Pass Report Variables

The following images show how adding the template variable name and entity value to a report's static URL changes the data displayed in a report.

To add a report as a tab in Inventory, do the following.

Results sets is a chart capability that provides for using the results of a Top N or Inventory chart, that is, the entities returned, as a basis for another Top N or Inventory chart.

Suppose you want to find the Top 10 IO Services consuming the most Appliance CPU. Then, from those results, you want to find the services consuming the most Appliance memory. You would follow these steps.