Reporting

Extract infrastructure insights for stakeholders, leadership, and external tools. Netdata provides four ways to create reports—from asking a simple question to exporting raw metrics into your existing business intelligence stack.

Methods overview

AI Insights

Ask Netdata anything about your infrastructure in plain language and receive an executive-ready report. No configuration required—just describe what you need.

When to use it

• Monday morning recap of weekend incidents
• Post-incident executive summary for leadership
• Weekly health checks and situational awareness
• Cost optimization analysis
• SLO conformance reporting

How to generate a report

1. Open Netdata Cloud and go to Insights
2. Select a pre-built report type (Infrastructure Summary, Performance Optimization, Capacity Planning, Anomaly Analysis) or click New Investigation for a custom prompt
3. Choose the time range and scope (all nodes or a specific room/space)
4. Click Generate

Reports complete in 2–3 minutes and are saved in Insights. You receive an email when the report is ready.

Scheduling recurring reports

Automate your reporting workflow with scheduled reports:

1. Configure your report as above
2. Click Schedule (next to Generate)
3. Choose cadence: daily, weekly, or monthly
4. Set the delivery time

Scheduled reports run automatically and deliver results to your email and the Insights tab.

Example prompts

Weekly infrastructure health:

Generate a weekly infrastructure summary for services A, B, and C.
Include major incidents, anomalies, capacity risks, and recommended follow-ups.

Cost optimization:

Identify underutilized nodes for cost savings. Monthly compute is ~$12K
with mixed workloads. Goal: save $2–3K/month without reliability impact.

SLO conformance:

Generate an SLO conformance report for 'user-auth' (99.9% uptime,
p95 latency <200ms) for the last 7 days. Include breaches, contributing
factors, and remediation recommendations.

Availability

• Available to Business and Free Trial plans
• Each report consumes 1 AI credit (10 free per month on eligible plans)
• Data privacy: metrics are summarized into structured context; your data is not used to train foundation models

AI Assistants (MCP)

Connect your AI assistant directly to Netdata using the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Ask questions in natural language and receive answers based on live infrastructure data.

MCP is available in two ways:

• Netdata Cloud MCP at app.netdata.cloud/api/v1/mcp — infrastructure-wide access to all your nodes (Business/Homelab plan)
• Agent/Parent MCP on every Netdata Agent and Parent (v2.6.0+) — direct local access (free, open-source)

AI assistants can query metrics, alerts, logs, and live system information across your entire infrastructure.

Supported AI clients

How to connect

# Export your MCP key
export NETDATA_MCP_API_KEY="$(cat /var/lib/netdata/mcp_dev_preview_api_key)"

# Connect using mcp-remote
npx mcp-remote@latest --http http://YOUR_NETDATA_IP:19999/mcp \
  --allow-http \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $NETDATA_MCP_API_KEY"

Example queries

Once connected, ask natural language questions:

• "Show me CPU usage for all nodes in the last 24 hours"
• "What are the top 10 processes by memory consumption?"
• "Find any anomalies in network traffic this week"
• "Generate a summary of all active alerts"
• "Which nodes have the highest disk utilization?"

Availability

• Cloud MCP: Available on Business and Homelab plans — infrastructure-wide access, zero local setup
• Agent/Parent MCP: Available on all plans (v2.6.0+) — free, open-source, direct local access
• Unlimited queries with no per-query charges
• Requires API key (Cloud token or local API key) for access

See Netdata MCP for detailed setup instructions.

Grafana integration

Connect Grafana to Netdata Cloud for infrastructure-wide dashboards. Use Grafana's visualization capabilities with Netdata's real-time metrics.

When to use it

• Teams already using Grafana for other data sources
• Custom dashboard requirements beyond Netdata's built-in charts
• Combining Netdata metrics with data from other systems

How to connect

1. Install the Netdata data source plugin in Grafana
2. Configure connection to Netdata Cloud using an API token
3. Create dashboards using Grafana's query builder

:::tip

Generate API tokens from Netdata Cloud under User Settings → API Tokens. See API Tokens for details.

:::

Availability

• Requires Netdata Cloud account
• Grafana Cloud or self-hosted Grafana
• API tokens available on all plans

Export to business intelligence tools

Export metrics from Netdata to external databases and business intelligence platforms. You can query data from individual Agents or use Netdata Cloud to aggregate metrics from your entire infrastructure.

Supported BI platforms

Netdata integrates with popular business intelligence tools through several pathways:

Query options

Netdata Cloud API (recommended)

The Netdata Cloud API lets you query metrics from all your nodes through a single endpoint. This is the simplest approach for multi-node infrastructure.

1. Generate an API token from User Settings → API Tokens
2. Use the token to authenticate requests to https://app.netdata.cloud/api/v2/data

# Query CPU metrics from all nodes
curl -H 'Accept: application/json' \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
     'https://app.netdata.cloud/api/v2/data?contexts=system.cpu&after=-3600'

# Get list of all nodes in your space
curl -H 'Accept: application/json' \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
     'https://app.netdata.cloud/api/v2/nodes'

The Cloud API returns aggregated data from all nodes in your infrastructure, making it ideal for BI tools that need a unified view.

Prometheus endpoint (single-node)

For single-node deployments or Prometheus-based workflows, query the Agent or Parent directly:

http://NODE_IP:19999/api/v3/allmetrics?format=prometheus

Replace NODE_IP with your Netdata Agent or Parent IP address:

• Agent IP: Returns metrics from that single node
• Parent IP: Returns aggregated metrics from all child agents connected to that Parent

This endpoint is useful when you need metrics from a specific node or when your BI tool already integrates with Prometheus.

REST API with JSON

Query specific metrics from an Agent or Parent in JSON format. This is useful for BI tools that need to combine Netdata metrics with other business data.

Common BI use cases:

# Daily averages for last 30 days, grouped by node
curl 'http://NODE_IP:19999/api/v3/data?contexts=system.cpu&after=-2592000&points=30&time_group=avg&group_by=node'

# Weekly max values for capacity planning
curl 'http://NODE_IP:19999/api/v3/data?contexts=system.ram&after=-604800&points=4&time_group=max&group_by=node'

# Hourly sum for cost analysis
curl 'http://NODE_IP:19999/api/v3/data?contexts=system.cpu&after=-86400&points=24&time_group=sum'

Key parameters for BI workflows:

Power BI, Tableau, and similar tools can consume this JSON through their data transformation features (Power Query, etc.).

Database export connectors

For persistent storage and historical analysis, export metrics to a database:

See Export Metrics to External Time-Series Databases for full connector documentation.

When to use this approach

• Existing BI infrastructure with established workflows
• Requirement to combine Netdata data with other business data sources
• Custom visualization needs not covered by built-in dashboards
• Long-term archival beyond Netdata's retention
• Compliance requirements for data export

Choosing the right method

Start with AI Insights if you:

• Need reports quickly without setup
• Want executive-ready summaries
• Prefer natural language over configuration
• Need recurring automated reports

Use AI Assistants (MCP) if you:

• Want real-time answers to ad-hoc questions
• Already use Claude, Cursor, or similar AI tools
• Need deep investigation capabilities
• Prefer conversational interaction with your data

Use Grafana if you:

• Already have Grafana deployed
• Need highly customized dashboards
• Want to combine Netdata with other data sources in one view
• Have team expertise in Grafana

Export to BI tools if you:

• Have established Power BI, Tableau, or Looker workflows
• Need to combine infrastructure metrics with business data
• Require custom analytics beyond monitoring
• Have compliance requirements for data in specific systems

Related documentation

• AI Insights: Infrastructure Summary
• AI Insights: Scheduled Reports
• Investigations
• Netdata MCP
• API Tokens
• Export Metrics to External Time-Series Databases
• REST API