Dashboard?

Hi Folks,
Looking for some information on either learning to create dashboards or some functional templates????

Googled and read quite a bit of information on the subject but most sites seem to offer only a partial functionality of a template so figured the best course of action was to write my own, 'if possible' ?

Ideally I'm looking to create a couple of dashboards to report on system uptimes and similar issues.

Preferably if possible I'd like to hear from people who've actually created dashboards and are commenting with first hand experience although if you
feel your comments are insightful then come aboard.

Thanks,
TF