About the Observability page
Last updated 2023-05-24
The Observability page allows you to monitor your real-time analytics and view your historical caching statistics for your services on the web interface.
Before you begin
Be sure you know how to access the web interface controls before learning about the details you'll encounter here.
NOTE
This page describes Observability details displayed when you haven't purchased any additional Fastly products. If you've purchased Origin Inspector, be sure to read our guide about the Origin Inspector stats in addition to this one.
About the Observability page
On the Observability page you can access:
- Real-time stats information that allows you to monitor cache activity for your services
- Historic stats information that displays your historical stats derived from your site’s statistical information
- Edge Observer metrics for Fastly Deliver and Compute services. Edge Observer metrics are grouped via system-generated and customizable dashboards. Edge Observer also allows you to view custom log messages from your Compute@Edge application.
The exact graphs displayed depend on your access permissions and the type of service you create, as well as other products and features you may have purchased. Different Observability graphs and navigation appear for:
The data on the Observability page may also appear grayed out or blank to some users, with no information displayed in the controls, when a service hasn't yet received enough requests for Fastly to display meaningful information about it.
Working with Observability graphs
You can interact with and control your Real-time and Historic Observability graphs as follows.
Limiting data viewed to specific data centers
By default, Real-time graphs display data from all data centers. To view data from a single, specific data center, select it from the All datacenters menu.
Disabling smooth scrolling
The Real-time graphs update continuously. Leaving the graphs open for long periods of time, however, can occasionally lead to higher CPU utilization. To improve performance, you can deselect the Smooth scrolling checkbox. The graphing animations may not be as smooth when this checkbox is deselected.
Viewing the real-time stats timestamp indicator
Hovering the cursor over any part of a graph displays a timestamp indicator that updates itself as you move the mouse.
Hiding and displaying the mean value
A dashed line indicating the mean value of the graph's data appears on some graphs. To hide the mean line, deselect the Mean checkbox.
Expanding and minimizing graph views
You can expand and minimize the view of some of the graphs using the quadruple arrow button in the right-hand corner of the graph to display an expanded view of the graph or special features it offers. Specifically:
- the Global POP Traffic heat map displays a larger view of the graph as well as the traffic in each POP region, with continuously updating data on the POP's current requests per second, the request error ratio, and the bandwidth going through that POP.
- the Requests, Errors, and Hit Ratio graphs expand to larger versions of themselves along with the already expanded versions of the Bandwidth and Origin Latency graphs.
- the Origin Latency graph specifically includes a small gear icon in the upper right corner that allows you to change the interval limit displayed by the graph from the default 15 second interval to a different time frame.
Viewing service version activation
Service version activations appear as vertical lines on the Historic graphs. Hovering your cursor over any line displays the version's number and its activation timestamp.
IMPORTANT
You cannot retrieve minutely historical statistics data older than 35 days from the current date. You cannot retrieve hourly historical statistics data older than 375 days from the current date. Contact support to discuss your minutely or hourly data needs.
Controlling the historic stats date displayed
You can control how you view the historic stats date ranges. For all displayed graphs, you can choose:
- the exact local date and time range of the graphed data
- how often to sample the data displayed
- whether to view global data for the graphs or only data from a specific region
- how to display the statistical values
Keep in mind, however, that data won't appear yet for time periods that haven't ended. Data aggregated per day is collected based on UTC days and each day's data becomes available around 2am the following day. Data aggregated by hour becomes available approximately 15 minutes after the end of each hour. Data aggregated by minute usually becomes available two minutes after the end of the minute, but can take up to 15 minutes. When the most recent data for the collected time range hasn't been aggregated yet, the graphs display a drop in traffic at the end of the depicted time span. If your use case requires data closer to real-time, consider using the real-time stats instead.
Changing the stats displayed in historical graphs
You can change the statistics displayed in any historical graph to display an average, a 95th percentile, a minimum, a maximum, or a total. When set to average, the graph displays the average (mean) as a dashed line.
To change the statistics displayed by all historical graphs, use the Display menu in the upper right corner, as shown below.
To change the statistics displayed for a individual graph, click the menu below the graph's name, as shown below.
You can also exclude certain data entirely from some graphs. For example, in the Status 3XX Details graph, you can click Show or Hide or the corresponding color ship next to the specific 3XX errors (301, 302, etc.) to show or hide those error types, respectively.
What's next
Dig deeper into details about all areas of the web interface controls before you move on to using them to work with services.Do not use this form to send sensitive information. If you need assistance, contact support.