The entity topology is a core component of Cloud Monitor 2.0. It provides an intuitive, intelligent, and layered view for exploring entity dependencies and metrics. You can use this view to identify system bottlenecks, find performance hot spots, and quickly locate abnormal propagation paths and their scope of impact.
Procedure
Log on to the Cloud Monitor 2.0 console and go to any workspace.
Go to the details page of any entity, and then choose .
Tools
Toolbar (upper-left corner)
The toolbar supports scaling, Center, Reset, and Filter.
Minimap (lower-right corner)
You can use the minimap to quickly drag and pan the view.
Legend (lower-left corner)
The legend displays all entity types in the current topology graph. If you click a specific type, such as Interface, the topology graph uses a breathing light animation for the corresponding nodes and a flow animation for the edges to highlight them.
By default, the legend displays two rows and collapses any additional types. You can click the collapse icon to show all types.
Filter pane
You can use the filter pane to filter the current topology graph by Node Type, Edge Type, and Full text Search. Items within the same filter category are combined with an OR operator, while different filter categories are combined with an AND operator.
For example, the filter pane in the figure is configured to filter for all entities of the `instance` and `application` types that contain the gateway field.
The full-text search matches all key-value pairs in an entity.
Node interaction
Node types
To avoid information overload, the topology graph displays two types of nodes:
Single node: Displays the entity name and key metrics. The content automatically wraps, and any text that exceeds two lines is truncated. A single node supports five interactions: Collapse, Zoom, View Metrics, Expand Next Level, and clicking the node to open the information pane.
Group node: Displays the type name and the number of entities in the group. A group node supports three interactions: Expand, View Metrics, and Split Child Nodes.
Clicking a node
Clicking a single node opens the Entity Information pane. This pane displays information about the entity and its metric charts for the selected time period.
Clicking a group node opens the Split Child Nodes pane. This pane displays all entities within the group node. You can select nodes to split them from the group and display them individually in the topology graph.
Expand/Collapse
When you hover the mouse over a group node, you can click Expand Group to display all nodes within the group on the topology graph.
Expanded group nodes support the Collapse Group action.
To optimize display performance and focus on important information, you cannot expand group nodes that contain more than 8 entities. Instead, you can click the group node to open the Split Child Nodes pane and manually select the target nodes to display.
If an Expand Next Level action causes the number of nodes in a group to exceed 8, the newly added nodes are placed in a new group node. The previously expanded child nodes are added to the split list and remain individually visible.
Focus
When you hover the mouse over a node, you can enter Focus Tracking mode. This mode centers the view on the focused node and displays its directly associated upstream and downstream nodes. This mode also tracks each Expand Next Level action, automatically shifting the focus to the node on which the action was performed.
In focus mode, a group node contains a subset of nodes that are directly associated with the focused node. If you expand this subset and then select Cancel Focus, the nodes in the subset are added to the Split Child Nodes pane.
View metrics
For a single node, you can hover over it and click View Metrics to open an information pane that displays all of its metrics. The content in this pane is the same as the content on the Metric Explorer page.
For a group node, you can hover over it and click View Metrics. This lets you select multiple target entities and compare their metrics side-by-side.
Expand next level
For a single node, you can hover the mouse over the Expand Next Level icon on the right side of the node to explore its related upstream and downstream entities one level deeper.
If an Expand Next Level action causes the current node to be absorbed into a group node, the original node is automatically added to the split child nodes list to ensure it remains visible as the interaction target.
Edge interaction
Clicking an edge
If an edge has associated metrics, the topology graph automatically displays metrics from the two most recent time slices on the edge. You can click the edge to open the Edge Metric Information pane.
Intelligent layout
The entity topology uses a proprietary, multi-level subgraph layout algorithm.
Hierarchical layout: Nodes are layered vertically by the entity's domain. From top to bottom, the domains are: Real User Monitoring (RUM), Application Monitoring (APM), Kubernetes (K8s) container orchestration, Alibaba Cloud services (ACS), and infrastructure (infra). Nodes in the same domain are grouped horizontally by entity type and arranged by the intelligent layout algorithm.
Dependency-driven directed layout: Nodes within the same domain are arranged horizontally based on their dependencies. This ensures that edges generally point from left to right, except in cases of cyclic relationships.
Sub-topology optimization: For nodes of the same type that have no internal relationships, an expanded group of these nodes occupies its own column. This prevents the nodes from overlapping with nodes of other types in the same column. If internal relationships exist, a specific sub-layout is applied for that node type.
Cycle handling: A special layout policy is used for cyclic relationships. In this policy, levels are assigned based on the outdegree of the nodes to ensure a logical and readable layout.