Organize systems, metrics, and alerts
When you monitor dozens or hundreds of systems, you need powerful ways to keep everything organized. Netdata helps you structure your infrastructure with Spaces, Rooms, virtual nodes, host labels, and metric labels.
Choose your organization strategy
Netdata provides multiple organization methods that work together:
- Spaces and Rooms: Group your infrastructure and team members
- Virtual nodes: Monitor multi-component systems as separate entities
- Host labels: Tag systems by purpose, location, or any custom criteria
- Metric labels: Filter and group metrics within charts
Organize your infrastructure and team
Spaces are your primary collaboration environment where you:
- Organize team members and manage access levels
- Connect nodes for monitoring
- Create a unified monitoring environment
Rooms function as organizational units within Spaces, providing:
- Infrastructure-wide dashboards
- Real-time metrics visualization
- Focused monitoring views
- Flexible node grouping
Each node belongs to exactly one Space but can be assigned to multiple Rooms within that Space.
Set up your organization
- Create a Space using the plus (+) icon in the left-most sidebar
- Invite team members and set their access levels
- Create Rooms to organize nodes by:
- Service type (Nginx, MySQL, Pulsar)
- Purpose (webserver, database, application)
- Location or infrastructure type (cloud provider, bare metal, containers)
Most organizations need only one Space. Create multiple Rooms within that Space to organize your infrastructure effectively.
Learn more in our Spaces and Rooms documentation.
Virtual nodes
Monitor complex systems as separate entities
Virtual nodes let you split multi-component systems into distinct, monitorable units. For example, you can monitor each Windows server in your infrastructure as its own node, even when collecting metrics through a single Netdata Agent.
To create a virtual node for your Windows server:
-
Define the virtual node in
/etc/netdata/vnodes/vnodes.conf
:- hostname: win_server1
guid: <value>tipGenerate a valid GUID using
uuidgen
on Linux or[guid]::NewGuid()
in Windows PowerShell. -
Add the vnode configuration to your data collection job in
go.d/windows.conf
:jobs:
- name: win_server1
vnode: win_server1
url: http://203.0.113.10:9182/metrics
Host labels
Tag your systems for smarter monitoring
Host labels help you:
- Create alerts that adapt to each system's purpose
- Archive metrics with proper categorization for analysis
- Track ephemeral containers in Kubernetes clusters
Use automatic labels
Netdata automatically generates host labels when it starts, capturing:
Label Category | Information Captured |
---|---|
System Info | Kernel version, OS name and version |
Hardware | CPU architecture, cores, frequency, RAM, disk space |
Environment | Container details, Kubernetes node status |
Infrastructure | Virtualization layer, Parent-child streaming status |
View your automatic labels at http://HOST-IP:19999/api/v1/info
:
{
"host_labels": {
"_is_k8s_node": "false",
"_is_parent": "false"
}
}
Create custom labels
Add your own labels to categorize systems by any criteria you need.
-
Edit your Netdata configuration:
cd /etc/netdata # Replace with your Netdata config directory
sudo ./edit-config netdata.conf -
Add a
[host labels]
section:[host labels]
type = webserver
location = us-seattle
installed = 20200218Label naming rules- Names cannot start with
_
- Use only letters, numbers, dots, and dashes
- Values cannot contain:
!
'
"
*
- Names cannot start with
-
Enable your labels without restarting Netdata:
netdatacli reload-labels
-
Verify your labels at
http://HOST-IP:19999/api/v1/info
Stream labels from Child to Parent
In Parent-Child setups, host labels automatically stream from children to the parent node. Access any child's labels through the parent at:
http://localhost:19999/host/CHILD_HOSTNAME/api/v1/info
Child node labels contain sensitive system information. Secure your streaming connections with SSL and consider using access lists or restricting API access.
Apply labels to alerts
Create targeted alerts based on host labels. For example, monitor disk space only on webservers:
template: disk_fill_rate
on: disk.space
lookup: max -1s at -30m unaligned of avail
calc: ($this - $avail) / (30 * 60)
every: 15s
host labels: type = webserver
Target systems by multiple criteria:
Target | Host Label | Use Case |
---|---|---|
Specific OS | _os_name = Debian* | Apply alerts to Debian systems |
Child nodes only | _is_child = true | Monitor streaming children |
Docker containers | _container = docker | Container-specific alerts |
See the health documentation for more possibilities.
Export labels with metrics
When using metrics exporters, include host labels with your exported data:
[exporting:global]
enabled = yes
send configured labels = yes
send automatic labels = no
Configure per-connection settings:
[opentsdb:my_instance3]
enabled = yes
destination = localhost:4242
data source = sum
update every = 10
send charts matching = system.cpu
send configured labels = no
send automatic labels = yes
Metric labels
Filter and group metrics within charts
Netdata's aggregate charts let you filter and group metrics using label name-value pairs. All go.d plugin collectors support labels at the collection job level.
Configure metric labels when collected from multiple sources. For example, label two Apache servers by service and location:
jobs:
- name: my_webserver1
url: http://host1/server-status?auto
labels:
service: "Payments"
location: "Atlanta"
- name: my_webserver2
url: http://host2/server-status?auto
labels:
service: "Payments"
location: "New York"
Define as many label pairs as you need across all your data collection jobs to create meaningful groupings in your dashboards.
Next steps
- Start with Spaces and Rooms to organize your infrastructure and team
- Add host labels to categorize your systems
- Configure metric labels for detailed filtering within charts
- Set up virtual nodes if you monitor complex, multi-component systems
Do you have any feedback for this page? If so, you can open a new issue on our netdata/learn repository.