Monitor the Network

This topic contains general information about monitoring the blockchain network.

Topics:

How Can I Monitor the Blockchain Network?

The console provides several ways for you to monitor the activity and health of your blockchain network.

For example, you can find summary information about the total number of blocks submitted to the ledger, or you can search for and locate information about specific chaincode transactions that happened on a specific channel.

You can use the console to locate the following sources of information to help you understand what’s happening on your network.

Network Overview Information

Use the Dashboard tab if you need at-a-glance information about how well the whole network is working and to spot any general issues such as a high rate of failing transactions. See View Network Activity.

Ledger Summary

For information about the runtime statistics for transactions on a specific channel, go to the channel’s Ledger Summary area. You can drill into a specific transaction for more information about it, such as which member initiated the transaction and which peer endorsed it. See View a Channel’s Ledger Activity.

Node Health

Use a node’s Health Summary area to help you understand how the node is performing on the network. For example, CPU utilization and memory utilization. See:

What Type of Information Is on the Dashboard?

The console’s Dashboard tab provides an overview of how well your network is functioning. You can use this information to identify any issue and to navigate to other tabs in the console where you can learn more about and resolve any issues.

Summary Bar

This section shows the components in your network (for example, how many nodes and chaincodes). You can click a component number to go to the console tab for more information or to perform tasks related to the component. If your instance is a development instance, then “Development mode” is displayed in the bottom right of the summary bar.

At the top of the console, you’ll see what type of instance you’re working with. If you’re a network founder, then you’ll see “(Founder)”. If you’re a participant in a network, then the top of your console displays the name of the network you’re joined to. For example, “(Participant of <foundername>)”.

Health

This section shows how many nodes are running and how many are stopped in the network. Click the node numbers to go to the Nodes tab to investigate why a node might be stopped, or for more information about the nodes in the network.

The nodes in your network are partitioned inside of a virtual machine (VM). This section also shows the percentage of the partition memory used, and the percentage of CPU and disk used. If the memory percentage is relatively low (for example, 50% or lower), then you can create another peer node without your system’s performance decreasing significantly. If the percentage is close to 100, then your system most likely can’t support another peer node.

Channel Activity

This area shows how many blocks have been created and how many transactions have been executed based on the number of blocks created. Note that you might see more blocks created than user transactions. For example, if you create a new channel or you instantiate a chaincode, then those are classified as system-level transactions and are included in blocks, but not classified as user transactions. This area shows the top four channels that have handled the most transactions, and for each channel shows the number of transactions that have succeeded and failed.

Note the following information:

User transactions are transactions that were invoked as part of the chaincode’s execution, and not underlying actions such as setting up the network, creating channels, and installing and instantiating chaincodes.
A block can contain multiple user transactions.

You can filter the amount of activity information that is displayed. You can select a set time range (for example, last hour or last week), or you can select Custom and pick the dates you want activity information for.

Peer Activity

This area shows the number of endorsement and commits completed by the network’s peer nodes. This area shows the top four peer nodes that have endorsed and committed the most transactions, and for each of those four peers, this area shows the number of endorsements and commits that have succeeded and failed.

Note the following information:

A transaction is an endorsement, and a commit is when a transaction is written to the block.
Commits can be either user transactions or system transactions
Commits are the number of transactions that have been committed to the block. Commits aren’t blocks.
Only specific peers must do endorsements, but all peers must do commits.

View Network Activity

Use the console’s Dashboard tab to find information about your blockchain network’s activities, such as percentage of nodes that are running or stopped, and how successfully the network is executing chaincode transactions.

You can use this information as a starting place and then use the other tabs in the console to drill into any issues that you discover. For information about what displays in the Dashboard tab, see What Type of Information Is on the Dashboard?

Go to the console and select the Dashboard tab.
To see channel and peer activity information that occurred at a specific time such as for the last week or month, go to the filter dropdown menu and select the time range you want. Select Custom to enter specific begin and end dates and click Apply.