Seen this before?
Find past periods whose behaviour looked like the one you are investigating, without reading raw logs.
Seen this before? searches your history for past periods when a service behaved like the one you are looking at. It reads no raw logs, so it returns quickly.
Use it to answer “has this happened before, and what did we do?”. Once you have a past match, open the post-incident notes for that date, or run What changed? on the old period to check that the cause was the same.
Before you start
The similar-periods view needs a one-time setup before it returns results, and it can only find periods from after that setup. Contact us to set it up, ideally soon after your normal traffic is flowing.
Searching
There are two ways in:
- From an incident: open the incident and select the Seen this before? tab. It lists past incidents that look similar.
- From a service or chart: open the similar-periods view (Find other times a service behaved like this). Pick the service and a moment inside the period you are investigating, then choose how far back to search.
Results are listed closest match first. Each one is a past period you can open.
Matches can come from any service, not only the one you started from. A match in another service can show an earlier problem with the same cause.
Following up a match
- Open the match in What changed? to see what moved during that period.
- Read its lines with Search over the same time range.
Treat a match as a lead, not proof. Always confirm with the underlying lines.