Recent changes and improvements to Dash0

Some of our users wished to resize the sidebar to allow them to look at a chart with more space. You can now do this. Just drag the edge of the sidebar to where you want it to be!

Logs without a severity aren't nearly as actionable as those stating ERROR or WARN. Explicitly mapping these log levels can be challenging and commonly requires the painful definition of regular expressions.

This capability is currently in closed beta while we validate its effectiveness. Reach out to us to join this closed beta!

Views in a nutshell help you to:

• quickly find a starting point for your search

• learn more about Dash0’s powerful filtering capabilities

• save time by focusing instantly on relevant data

• explore and understand complex datasets

**Spoiler alert: **We’re just getting started! Coming soon: The ability to create and save your own custom views, tailoring Dash0 perfectly to your unique datasets and workflows. Stay tuned for even more ways to make your data work for you!

Wherever you see a PromQL query, you can now click the small 🎓-button to learn more about the query. Dash0 will then…

• format the PromQL query to visualize its hierarchy,

• list the referenced metrics, including a quick reference of its type and availability and

• provide a textual description of what the query is doing.

We have improved the consistency of synthetic metrics. The metrics are now all grouped under the dash0 namespace. You can use dash0.spans in the query builder to get the span count, dash0.spans.duration for the span duration and dash0.logs for the log count. For greater compatibility, we have also made it so that dash0.spans.duration is interpreted as a native Prometheus histogram!

We have extended grouping capabilities for these metrics. Now can now group them by the dash0.*, otel.span.* and otel.log.* attributes, e.g., dash0.operation.name and otel.log.severity_range. Giving you more control than ever before!

The filter control is now a permanently visible input field. This notably improves the experience, aids discoverability, allows you to see already applied filters, and makes for a much more natural keyboard interaction.

We have also made the content of the filter popup much more intelligent. You can now see values immediately on the first page, guiding you and allowing you to avoid having to know all attribute keys by heart. Also go straight into search made when your input doesn't full match an existing value!

We have been improving the dashboarding experience. Now, you can experience faster and more flexible dashboarding than before!

Starting with two new widget types, you can now visualize distributions using tree maps and pie charts. Both are handy for determining which pod is using the most memory or which service is generating the most errors.

Next, we have revised how we are showing unformatted series names. You know, those my_metric{service_name="shop", k8s_pod_name="shop-abcd"} selectors that are used as fallbacks when no better name is available. These are now color-coded for easier reading, and the attributes are sorted in the same as within the filter dialog.

Last, we highlight the chart cursor position across charts for much easier visual correlation!

Dashboards are a very powerful tool to see all the telemetry for your specific use cases on one screen. Check rules are indispensable to get alerted when conditions in your system require human intervention.

Editing a dashboard or a check rule via Dash0's UI is probably the best way to get fast feedback, and iterate quickly. However, if you have a lot of dashboards or checks, at some point you might want to go with a more systematic approach. Configuration as code is the way to go.

Operator

The Dash0 Kubernetes operator now supports managing dashboards as well as check rules. Simply deploy them as Kubernetes resources, the Dash0 operator will automatically pick them up and synchronize them with your dashboards and check rules in Dash0. Additionally, you can also directly manage them via Dash0's API, if you want to do so from your CI system or via scripting.

Standards

Last but not least, Dash0 is committed to open standards. For dashboards, we use the emerging CNCF standard Perses, and for check rules we use the Prometheus rules custom resource definition. This enables you to build your dashboards and check rules with zero vendor lock-in.

You can read more about this feature here.

Here is an example for a Perses dashboard Kubernetes resource: https://github.com/dash0hq/dash0-operator/blob/main/test-resources/customresources/persesdashboard/persesdashboard.yaml

Now adding a fully configured Perses dashboard to Dash0 becomes as easy as executing the following one-liner:

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kubectl apply -f persesdashboard.yaml

And here is how a Kubernetes resource for check rules looks like: https://github.com/dash0hq/dash0-operator/blob/main/test-resources/customresources/prometheusrule/prometheusrule.yaml

To deploy this to your cluster and have the Dash0 Kubernetes operator create the corresponding check rules:

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kubectl apply -f prometheusrule.yaml
   

Resources are everywhere within Dash0: prominently within the resource map and table and explicitly called out within tracing, logging, metrics, and check rules. Starting today, resources are even more helpful.

We have thoroughly revised the sidebar and removed our modes concept from the resource map and table. The latter added unnecessary complexity and confusion. We also moved the table and map switcher to the main navigation, resulting in an overall much cleaner look without any information loss!

Within the sidebar, you can now always find the resource's health—with a dedicated tab for more details. Similarly, we have merged the requests, errors, and duration tabs into one, allowing us to switch between aggregations for these RED metrics!

Resources are also present whenever you look at spans, logs, and metrics. We also provide the same powerful hovercard-context experience within these locations. See a slow gRPC span? Quickly look up which service or Kubernetes pod is involved in the call!

The resource sidebar's telemetry tab has been showing information about tracing and logging data for some time. Now, we are extending it with details about metrics reported by a resource!

You can quickly navigate to metrics available for a service or pod through the new metrics card. This card makes identifying whether a resource emits metrics easier and facilitates jumping into the metric explorer.