Have you ever seen widgets from different dashboards you wanted to combine into a new custom dashboard? Do you also not want to waste time recreating the wheel? If the answers to these questions are yes then here is a step by step cheat I use leveraging copy/paste of widgets to generate quick custom dashboards.
My example:
i want to take a vCenter view of my environment and see all the VM CPU > 80%
metric for any of my vCenters in a particular location.
Step by step of copy and paste
First let’s go to dashboards create new dashboards. Then let’s give it a name. My example is Test ____
Now open a second tab and go to the first dashboard you want to copy from. My example is using a select an environment widget I like to use to either select via vSphere World, vCenter or Host & Cluster. For this example it will be the vCenter level.
First go to Edit Dashboard
Select the widget so in my case the select an environment
Then select Copy Widget(s)
Return to the other tab with the new dashboard
Select paste widget
Congratulations you have successfully copied and pasted a widget from an existing dashboard into your custom. I could stop the blog article here but let’s go a little further and have some fun.
Rinse and repeat a metric you want from a completely different existing dashboard.
Once again go to edit the dashboard with the widget you want
The widget I want to copy and paste is for VM CPU Demand > 80% and it is a Self-Provider – this is important to remember
Also note that it is collecting against the vSphere World by default
Select the widget click Copy Widget(s)
Now return to the new dashboard and click paste
Paste
Since the VM CPU widget was pulling from vSphere World it is already reporting data even if you click on different vCenter(s).
This may present a problem if you are wanting to toggle between vCenters
Click on show interactions
Lets change this real quick
Much better but still not done yet.
Let’s go back to the VM CPU widget and select the pencil to edit
Let’s change Self Provider from on to off
Save
Save
Now you should be able to toggle between your vCenters and see the different list of VMs with CPU higher than 80%. We have successfully taken two widgets from existing dashboards and had them interact to report the desired metric.
Summary:
I find creating custom dashboards can sometimes be a pain, especially, when the widgets you want are already in existing dashboards. The copy and paste feature with some mild tweaking of the metrics allows for much faster dashboard creations. In addition, it is not that difficult to take 2/3rds of the widgets you need and copy and paste and then create the custom widgets. This helps speed up the process I find. I hope y’all found this article useful.