Azure Monitor is a robust service offered by Microsoft as part of its Azure platform. It is designed to help you understand how your applications are performing and identify any issues, possibly even before they occur. It provides comprehensive solutions for collecting, analyzing, and acting on telemetry from your cloud and on-premises environments.
Azure Monitor collects data from multiple sources into a common data platform where it can be analyzed for insights. This data can include application logs, operating system logs, and performance counts. The service not only collects new data but can also integrate with your existing data sources.
1. Azure Log Analytics
Log Analytics is a tool in Azure Monitor for complex analysis across all your collected monitoring data. It serves as the primary tool in the Azure portal for writing log queries and interactively analyzing their results.
Log Analytics lets you run real-time queries across multiple logs, letting you quickly identify patterns, detect anomalies, and determine root cause analysis. For example, if you were dealing with an issue where a specific service was failing at certain times, Log Analytics would allow you to query your logs for that service, specifying the timeframe you’re interested in.
Here’s an example of a Log Analytics query:
kusto
AppRequests
| where TimeGenerated > ago(1h)
| where ResultCode == 200
| summarize count() by Application
In this query, all successful requests (ResultCode 200) made in the last hour will be counted and categorized by applications.
Log Analytics queries use a language called Kusto Query Language (KQL). While KQL is fairly easy to learn, creating complex queries can take a bit of practice. Luckily, there’s plenty of documentation and resources available to help you learn how to harness the full power of KQL.
2. Azure Monitor Alerts
Azure Monitor Alerts proactively notify you of critical conditions and potentially take automatic, corrective action. Alert instances are generated when the alert rule’s conditions are evaluated as true.
Azure Monitor Alert uses metric-based and log search alert types. For instance, an alert could be set up to trigger if the CPU utilization of a certain VM exceeds 90% over a five-minute time span, or if the number of HTTP server errors goes above a certain threshold.
3. Application Insights
Application Insights is an extensible Application Performance Management (APM) service for developers and DevOps professionals. It allows you to monitor your live applications, detect performance anomalies, and observe how your application is used. It can diagnose issues and understand what users actually do with your app. It’s designed to help you continuously improve performance and usability.
Imagine you have a web app and would like to detect instances where customers experience unsuccessful logins. This is where Application Insights comes in.
Application Insights can track user behavior, such as pages visited and buttons clicked, allowing you to determine how often users encounter issues like failed logins.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Azure Monitor Alerts, and Application Insights form a robust, comprehensive monitoring solution. They provide the deep insights needed to keep applications and services running optimally. Whether you’re monitoring application performance, troubleshooting system issues, or looking to understand user behavior, these tools can provide the powerful insights you need. Azure’s flexibility also allows these tools to be extended or integrated with other services to meet unique monitoring requirements.
Practice Test
True/False: Azure Monitor collects, analyzes, and acts on telemetry data from your Azure and non-Azure environments.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Azure Monitor absolves telemetry from various sources including applications, Operating System (OS) runtime, Azure platform, Azure subscription, and Azure tenant, regardless of they are in Azure environment or not.
True/False: Log Analytics is a service in Azure Monitor responsible for sending alert notifications.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: Log Analytics is a tool in Azure Monitor that collects and analyzes data generated by resources in your cloud and on-premises environments.
Which of the following services are parts of Azure Monitor? (Select all that apply)
- A. Application Insights
- B. Log Analytics
- C. Azure Monitor alerts
- D. Azure SQL Database
Answer: A. Application Insights, B. Log Analytics, C. Azure Monitor alerts
Explanation: The Azure Monitor includes Log Analytics, Application Insights, and Azure Monitor alerts. Azure SQL Database is not a part of Azure Monitor though it can provide logs and metrics to it.
True/False: Azure Monitor cannot be used to set up alerts for non-Azure resources.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: Azure Monitor is capable of setting up alerts for both Azure and non-Azure resources as long as they provide telemetry data.
What does Application Insights in Azure Monitor do?
- A. Monitors application health
- B. Monitors security alerts
- C. Monitors storage accounts
- D. Monitors network traffic
Answer: A. Monitors application health
Explanation: Application Insights is an extensible Application Performance Management (APM) service for developers and DevOps professionals which helps to monitor the live application’s performance and other metrics.
Which of the following can you do with Azure Monitor? (Select all that apply)
- A. Detect and diagnose issues
- B. Visualize, query, route, archive, and act on the metrics
- C. Monitor the activities of your Azure subscription
- D. Configure alerts only for Azure resources
Answer: A. Detect and diagnose issues, B. Visualize, query, route, archive, and act on the metrics, C. Monitor the activities of your Azure subscription
Explanation: Azure Monitor can be used to detect and diagnose issues, visualize and act on metrics, and monitor the activities of your Azure subscription. However, it’s not limited to configuring alerts only for Azure resources, it can also configure alerts for non-Azure resources.
True/False: Azure Monitor and Log Analytics are the same thing.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: Azure Monitor is a service that collects and analyzes performance and log data, whereas Log Analytics is a tool within Azure Monitor that helps you interact with and analyze the collected log data.
Which of the following are sources of monitoring data that Azure Monitor can collect? (Select all that apply)
- A. Application data
- B. Operating system data
- C. Azure resource data
- D. Azure subscription data
Answer: A. Application data, B. Operating system data, C. Azure resource data, D. Azure subscription data
Explanation: Azure Monitor can collect data directly from your Azure resources, the operating system and services of the virtual machine, and from the application itself.
True/False: Azure Monitor Alerts enable the user to identify and address issues affecting the resources.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Azure Monitor alerts proactively notify you when important conditions are found in your monitoring data, helping you identify and address issues.
True/False: Azure Monitor supports only graphical visualizations.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: Azure Monitor supports a variety of visualization options including graphical, chart-based, and tabular formats, and it can also integrate with PowerBI for more advanced reporting capabilities.
Interview Questions
What is Azure Monitor?
Azure Monitor is a tool provided by Microsoft Azure that maximizes the availability and performance of applications through comprehensive monitoring of applications, infrastructure, and network.
What is the primary purpose of Azure Monitor?
The primary purpose of Azure Monitor is to provide insights and visibility into the performance, availability, and operation of applications and services.
What is Log Analytics in Azure Monitor?
Log Analytics in Azure Monitor is a feature to collect and analyze data generated by resources in your cloud and on-premises environments which helps to understand their status and identify issues that might affect their functions.
How does Azure Monitor alerts work?
Azure Monitor alerts proactively inform users when specific conditions are found in the monitoring data. They work by identifying critical situations and sending notifications when these occur.
What is Application Insights?
Application Insights is an extensible Application Performance Management (APM) service for developers and IT professionals which monitors live applications, automatically detects performance anomalies, and includes powerful analytics tools.
What types of data does Application Insights collect?
Application Insights collects various types of data including request rates, response times, failure rates, dependency rates, exceptions, page views, and user session counts.
Who primarily benefits from using Azure Monitor?
IT operations teams, system administrators, and developers are the ones who primarily benefit from using Azure Monitor.
What is the difference between Azure Monitor and Application Insights?
While Azure Monitor provides you full stack observability across your applications, infrastructure, and network, Application Insights is specifically designed to give you deep insights into your application’s performance and usage patterns.
How is Log Analytics connected to Azure Monitor?
Log Analytics is a part of Azure Monitor which processes data from various sources into a consolidated workspace for detailed analysis and insights.
Can Azure Monitor and Application Insights be used together?
Yes, Azure Monitor and Application Insights can be used together to get a comprehensive view of your applications. Azure Monitor can collect data from the underlying infrastructure while Application Insights collects data at the application level.
Does Azure Monitor support monitoring of on-premises systems?
Yes, Azure Monitor can collect data from a variety of sources, including on-premises systems and any operating system.
How does Azure Monitor handle alerts?
Azure Monitor creates and handles alerts based on metrics and log data. When metrics meet certain conditions, or specific events occur in log data, Azure Monitor creates an alert and can send an email notification.
Is there a cost associated with Azure Monitor?
Yes, while some aspects of Azure Monitor are free, such as collecting basic metrics and alerts, some features incur costs, such as Log Analytics and Application insights.
Can we set up custom alerts in Azure Monitor?
Yes, custom alerts can be set up in Azure Monitor based on the metrics or logs like CPU percentage, Memory usage, etc.
How can the data collected by Azure Monitor be viewed?
The collected data can be viewed in Azure Monitor Logs and visualized in Azure dashboards, views, and charts.
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