[chapter]
[role="xpack"]
[[xpack-infra]]
= Metrics

The {metrics-app} in {kib} enables you to monitor your infrastructure metrics and identify problems in real time.
You start with a visual summary of your infrastructure where you can view basic metrics for common servers, containers, and services.
Then you can drill down to view more detailed metrics or other information for that component.

You can:

* View your infrastructure metrics by hosts, Kubernetes pods, or Docker containers.
You can group and filter the data in various ways to help you identify the items that interest you.

* View current and historic values for metrics such as CPU usage, memory usage, and network traffic for each component.
The available metrics depend on the kind of component being inspected.

* Use *Metrics Explorer* to group and visualize multiple customizable metrics for one or more components in a graphical format.
You can optionally save these views and add them to {kibana-ref}/dashboard.html[dashboards].

* Seamlessly switch to view the corresponding logs, application traces or uptime information for a component.

* Create alerts based on metric thresholds for one or more components.

[role="screenshot"]
image::infrastructure/images/infra-sysmon.png[Infrastructure Overview in Kibana]

[float]
=== Get started

To get started with Metrics, refer to {metrics-guide}/install-metrics-monitoring.html[Install Metrics].

