OpenSearch Dashboards is an open-source data visualization and exploration tool that is commonly used with the OpenSearch search and analytics engine. OpenSearch Dashboards allow users to create interactive and customizable data visualizations like charts, graphs, and maps. You can visualize data from various sources, including log files, databases, and other structured or unstructured data.

From your dashboard, you will find ‘Logs Management’. To the far right of this section, you will find the ‘Visualizations’ card. Here you can utilize dashboards to gain insights, investigate, and analyze your log data, to enable well-informed decision-making, this can be conducted by selecting ‘Launch’ next to ‘OpenSearch Dashboards’.

Looking further into the capabilities of the ‘Visualizers’ section in ‘Logs Management’, you will find an ellipses at the top right of the card.

By clicking on the ellipses, a small menu will appear. If you select ‘Install Dashboards’ it will take you to a page where you can choose from a range of pre-configured custom data source dashboards for installation and visualization within your stack.

Below ‘Install Dashboards’ in the ellipses menu is ‘OpenSearch Dashboards Settings’. If you click this link you will be able to view further details and version information for the OpenSearch Dashboards running in your Stack and activate Multi-Stack functionality for OpenSearch Dashboards.

The final option in the menu is ‘Grafana Settings’. If you select this you have the option to enable the Grafana visualizer for your Logs Management stack, allowing you to choose between OpenSearch Dashboards and/or Grafana for deeper log analysis.

Lastly, from the Visualizations card you can view your ‘OpenSearch Dashboard Nodes’. OpenSearch nodes refer to individual instances of the OpenSearch software that run as part of a cluster. These nodes work together to form a distributed and scalable system for storing and searching data. Here you can view each individual instance and its health.

Once you have selected “Launch Logs” at the top of the overview page you will be able to generate your first dashboard in order to visualize your data. In OpenSearch from the left-hand menu you can select “overview” under “OpenSearch Dashboards” to get started with visualizing your data for the first time:

From here you can select “discover” to visualize your ingested data in more detail. You also have the option to add sample data. This will generate an example dashboard that can be cloned, edited, and adjusted to help you see the options for visualization that hosted OpenSearch is capable of:

If you have any questions or issues viewing your log data within OpenSearch Dashboards, then feel free to reach out to a member of the Logit.io team via live chat and we’ll be happy to help.

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