This topic describes how to create and customize real-time monitoring dashboards and add charts to the dashboards for Web Application Firewall (WAF) in the CloudMonitor console. By using custom dashboards and charts, you can view detailed information about how your workloads are protected by WAF in a visualized manner.

Background information

CloudMonitor is a service that monitors Internet applications and Alibaba Cloud resources. It allows you to view monitoring data in custom dashboards. You can aggregate monitoring data of different products and instances running the same type of workloads by using one dashboard.

You can configure dashboards for WAF in the CloudMonitor console. CloudMonitor supports monitoring the following WAF data metrics.

Table 1. Monitor metrics for WAF
Monitor metric Dimension Unit Description Remarks
4XX_ratio Domain name % The percentage of the 4xx HTTP status codes per minute (405 excluded). The value is displayed in decimal notation in alert notifications.
5XX_ratio Domain name % The percentage of the 5xx HTTP status codes per minute. The value is displayed in decimal notation in alert notifications.
acl_blocks_5m Domain name Count The number of requests blocked by access control within the last five minutes. None
acl_rate_5m Domain name % The percentage of requests blocked by access control within the last five minutes. The value is displayed in decimal notation in alert notifications.
cc_blocks_5m Domain name Count The number of requests blocked by HTTP flood protection within the last five minutes. None
cc_rate_5m Domain name % The percentage of requests blocked by HTTP flood protection within the last five minutes. The value is displayed in decimal notation in alert notifications.
web_blocks_5m Domain name Count The number of requests blocked by web attack protection within the last five minutes. None
web_rate_5m Domain name % The percentage of requests blocked by web attack protection within the last five minutes. The value is displayed in decimal notation in alert notifications.
qps Domain name Count The number of queries per second. None
qps_ratio Domain name % The growth rate of QPS every minute on the minute. The value is displayed in percentage notation in alert notifications.
qps_ratio_down Domain name % The decrease rate of QPS every minute on the minute. The value is displayed in percentage notation in alert notifications.

Procedure

  1. Log on to the CloudMonitor console.
  2. Choose Dashboard > Custom Dashboard, and then click Create Dashboard.Create a dashboard
  3. In the Create Dashboard dialog box that appears, specify a name for the dashboard, and then click Create.Create a view group
    After the dashboard is created, you are redirected to the Dashboards page. You can select a dashboard from the Dashboards drop-down list to view or manage the selected dashboard.
  4. Choose Custom Dashboard and click Add View, set the required parameters on the Add View page that appears on the right side.
    1. Select a chart type. Supported chart types include line, area, and pie charts, TopN tables, and heat maps.
      • Line chart: Displays monitoring data on a basis of time series. Multiple metrics can be added.
      • Area chart: Displays monitoring data on a basis of time series. Multiple metrics can be added.
      • Table: Displays real-time metric data in descending order. Each table displays up to 1,000 data records, which are either the first 1,000 records or the last 1,000 records. Only one metric can be added.
      • Heat map: Displays real-time metric data. Heat maps show the distribution and comparison of real-time data of a specific metric for multiple instances. Only one metric can be added.
      • Pie chart: Displays real-time metric data and can be used for data comparisons. Only one metric can be added.
    2. Select Metrics. Click the Dashboards tab and select WAF. Select a metric from the Metrics drop-down list and select resources from the Resource drop-down list.
      • Metrics: Select a metric to be monitored. For more information, see WAF metrics.
      • Resource: Select the domain names to be monitored. Select domains

        Click AddMetrics if you want to add more metrics.

    3. Click Save to create the chart.
    Create a chart
    You have created a WAF monitoring chart.
  5. To add more charts to the dashboard, repeat step 4. For more information, see Add charts and Manage dashboards.