Creating Alerts with Netdata Alerts Configuration Manager

The Netdata Alerts Configuration Manager lets you create and fine-tune alerts directly from the Netdata Cloud Dashboard using a visual UI wizard.

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Want AI to handle the configuration for you? Alerts Automation uses AI to suggest alerts, generate the configuration, and test it against historical data — so you can validate thresholds before deployment without writing any configuration manually.

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To use this feature, you'll need an active Netdata subscription. View subscription plans

Creating Alerts: Quick Guide

Alert Detection Types

You can choose from different ways to trigger alerts based on your monitoring needs:

Type	Description
Standard	Fires when a metric crosses a set value
Metric Variance	Fires based on variation in values over time
Anomaly Rate	Fires when the ML-calculated anomaly rate exceeds a threshold

Choose the type that best suits the behavior you want to monitor.

The Anomaly Rate detection type uses ML-generated anomaly bits to calculate what percentage of data points in a time window were flagged as anomalous. Thresholds are expressed as percentages (0–100% anomaly rate). You can configure it from any chart's alert bell icon by selecting Anomaly Rate as the detection type.

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For details on how anomalies are detected, see ML Anomaly Detection. For the underlying alert configuration syntax with anomaly-bit lookups, see the Alert Configuration Reference (Examples 6 and 7).

Metrics Lookup & Filters

Click Show advanced in the Alert Configuration Manager to access these options.

Metrics Lookup

You can define how Netdata should query the data before triggering an alert:

Parameter	Description
method	How values are aggregated (avg, min, max, etc.)
duration	Time window used for the check
dimensions	Which metric dimensions to include
options	Modify how values are interpreted (e.g., percentage, absolute)

Filtering Targets

You can limit your alert to specific infrastructure components:

• Hosts
• Nodes
• Instances
• Operating systems
• Chart labels

Formulas

You can use a custom formula to manipulate values before comparing against thresholds.

Example:

(metric1 - metric2) / 100

Defining Alert Conditions

You control how and when alerts are triggered, escalated, or resolved:

Setting	Purpose
Thresholds	Define values for warning and critical states
Recovery thresholds	Set when the alert should downgrade or clear
Check interval	How often the alert check runs (e.g., every 10 seconds)
Notification delay	Delay before sending notifications for state changes
Repeat notifications	How often to resend an alert if the issue persists (Agent only)
Notification recipients	Define who gets alerted (Agent only)
Custom exec script	Run a custom shell script when an alert triggers

Naming and Documentation

Field	Description
Alert Name	A unique name for the alert
Description	What the alert does, in one or two sentences
Summary	Optional: a short summary for display in dashboards

Final Notes

• You can apply alert definitions to Parent Agents or Standalone Child Agents
• If you need help writing custom alerts, check the full alert reference
• To create alerts using natural language instead of this manual wizard, see Alerts Automation