One of the new features in the latest 2304 release of the standalone Visual Builder are administrator metrics. These metrics give insight into the performance and load on your Visual Builder instances and can help you improve your users and developers experience.
To access the metrics, navigate to the cloud console and into the "Developer Services" -> "Visual Builder" option to locate the specific instance you are interested in. Note that you can set the region you are interested in at the top right of your web page. Once you locate your instance click on it to get the full details. You'll notice a metrics appearing just below your instance information. Note that this information is only available for OCI-Native (Gen2) instances of Visual Builder, which is one more reason to migrate to them if you are still using a Gen1 instance.
Metrics Information
Currently we are showing three charts with the following information:
- OCPU Consumption
- Concurrent Users
- Database Usage
At the top of the charts you are able to pick the time range for the data you are interested in. For each chart you are able to choose the function used on the data – in most cases you'll be looking to use either the mean or max function. For example it would make sense to use the max option on the number of users and database usage, and the mean for the OCPU consumption.
In the OCPU Consumption chart you'll see separate lines for each one of the OCPUs (nodes) running in your server. By default you'll see two of those, since each Visual Builder is provisioned with two OCPUs to enable high-availability. You'll see the mean OCPU usage and you can set the interval you want for this data point. Looking at this data can help you decide if you need to scale your instance up or down by adding/removing nodes. For example if you notice that most of the time your mean OCPU usage is around 90%, it is probably an indication that your instance deals with quite a heavy load. It might be time to add another node, which will ease the load and can provide better response time for your customers.
The Concurrent Users chart can help you track usage patterns of your end users (and developers). If for example you notice that toward the end of the month your instance is seeing a spike in the number of users, you might want to plan for this and add another node to your instance to prevent overload during pick usage. You can then remove that extra node once the pick is over.
The Database Usage metric can help you identify situations where an application might be generating too much data. It can also help identify when is your data growing beyond the limits of the included built in database that comes with Visual Builder, and you might need to switch to a standalone database for your instance.
From this metrics page you can further drill to define other queries on the data you are looking to get and even set alarms to notify administrator about the status of specific metrics, all helping you better manage your instances.
For more on the roles and tasks admins can take check out the Visual Builder admin guide.