Azure monitor

Great Power November 01, 2022

Azure Monitor is a service provided by Microsoft Azure that helps you monitor the performance and availability of your applications and services. It provides real-time monitoring, alerting, and analytics for your resources running on Azure. The service collects data from various sources, such as Azure resources, on-premises systems, and other cloud services, to provide a unified view of your infrastructure. The data collected can be used to create dashboards, set up alerts, and generate reports. Some of the key features of Azure Monitor include log analytics, application insights, metrics, alerts, and automated diagnosis. The service also integrates with other Azure services, such as Azure Security Center, to provide a comprehensive solution for managing and monitoring your cloud environment.

Azure Monitor is a Azure-native service that provides monitoring and diagnostics capabilities for resources deployed in Azure. Some key features of Azure Monitor include:

  • Log Analytics: Collect, search and visualize log data from multiple sources such as Azure resources, on-premises resources, and third-party services.
  • Metrics: Monitor key performance indicators for your resources and applications, such as CPU utilization, memory usage, and network traffic.
  • Alerts: Create and manage alerts based on metric thresholds or log searches to notify you of important changes.
  • Workbooks: Create and share custom, interactive reports for your team using a combination of log queries, metrics, and markdown text.
  • Dashboards: Create and share custom dashboards with tiles that display metrics, log queries, and status from Azure services.
  • Diagnostic Settings: Easily configure diagnostics logs for your Azure resources to collect and stream log data to Azure Monitor.
  • Multitenant Monitoring: Monitor the health and performance of your multitenant applications and services.
  • Action Groups: Create and manage groups of people to receive notifications, run scripts, or call webhooks when alerts are triggered.
  • API Access: Azure Monitor provides a REST API for programmatic access to monitoring data, enabling you to build custom tools and integrations.
Azure Monitor provides a centralized platform for monitoring various Azure resources such as virtual machines, web applications, databases, and others. The following can be monitored using Azure Monitor:
  • Azure resources: You can monitor the performance and availability of your Azure resources like virtual machines, databases, web applications, and others.
  • Logs: You can collect and analyze logs from various sources such as Azure resources, custom applications, and third-party services.
  • Metrics: You can collect and visualize metric data from your Azure resources to understand performance trends and take proactive actions.
  • Alerts: You can set up alerts to be notified in case of any critical issues with your Azure resources.
  • Analytics: You can use Azure Monitor Log Analytics to perform complex queries and gain insights into your Azure resources.
  • Autoscale: You can use Azure Monitor to configure autoscaling rules for your Azure resources to automatically scale up or down based on demand.
Azure Monitor has the ability to detect potential security threats. It can identify unusual or suspicious activity through Azure Security Center, an integrated security management platform for Azure and hybrid cloud environments. Azure Monitor also provides various security logs, like Azure Active Directory sign-in logs and Azure resource logs, to help detect potential security threats. However, it is important to note that Azure Monitor is not a full-fledged security solution and should be used in conjunction with other security tools and best practices.

Azure Monitor Metrics is a feature in Azure Monitor that allows you to store, query, and visualize performance and health data for various Azure services and resources. It provides real-time insights into resource performance, enables you to create custom alerts, and track trends over time. With Azure Monitor Metrics, you can monitor performance and health data for Azure resources, including virtual machines, web apps, databases, and other services, and view that data in a variety of ways, including charts, tables, and alerts.

Azure Metrics and Azure Monitor are related but distinct concepts in the Azure platform.

Azure Metrics refer to performance-related numerical data produced by various Azure resources such as virtual machines, storage accounts, and web apps. These metrics are a representation of the resource's activity and behavior and are used to determine the resource's health and performance.

On the other hand, Azure Monitor is a monitoring and diagnostics service that helps you track the performance, availability, and usage of your Azure resources. Azure Monitor collects, analyzes, and presents metrics, logs, and traces for your resources and applications. The service provides a single unified experience for monitoring Azure resources and includes several monitoring features such as metric alerts, activity logs, and autoscale.

In summary, Azure Metrics are the performance data collected by Azure resources, while Azure Monitor is the service that collects, analyzes, and presents metrics, logs, and traces to provide a unified view of the health, performance, and availability of your resources.

Azure Monitor is a modern observability tool in Azure that helps you monitor and manage the performance and availability of your applications, services, and resources. It provides a comprehensive solution for collecting, analyzing, and acting on telemetry from your applications and infrastructure. Some of the other modern observability tools in Azure are:
  • Azure Log Analytics: A service that helps you collect and analyze logs and metrics from multiple sources, including Azure resources and on-premises servers.
  • Azure Application Insights: A service that helps you monitor the performance and usage of your applications, detect issues, and diagnose root causes.
  • Azure Monitor for Containers: A service that helps you monitor and manage the performance and availability of your containerized applications and services.
  • Azure Monitor for VMs: A service that helps you monitor the performance and availability of your virtual machines.
  • Azure Monitor for Active Directory: A service that helps you monitor the performance and availability of your Azure Active Directory services and applications.
Each of these tools provides unique features and capabilities for monitoring and managing your resources and applications, and you can use them together to gain a comprehensive view of your environment.