Azure VM Monitoring

There are different Azure services that are available to monitor our Azure virtual machines.

Diagnostics and metrics

• Using the activity log, we can monitor and audit the operation carried on a Virtual machine. For example - starting the virtual machine, stopping the virtual machine, reimaging, etc.
• Observe base metrics for the VM using Azure monitor. You will see those metrics in the form of a dashboard within the resource section itself. But if you go to Azure monitor, you can monitor all the base metrics of any resources within Azure, including virtual machines.
• Enable the collection of boot diagnostics and view it using the Azure portal.
• Enable the collection of guest OS diagnostics data, and analyze using OMS (Operation Management Speed).
• We can set up and monitor the collection of diagnostics data using metrics in the Azure portal, the Azure CLI, Azure PowerShell, and REST APIs

Alerts

Azure provides a comprehensive ability to get alerted. There are three sources of information against which we can get alerted.

• Activity Log

• Resource Metrics

• Diagnostic Logs

When it comes to diagnostic logs, we can raise an alert based on diagnostic logs using an OMS alert. And in case of resource metrics and activity logs, we'll use the Azure monitor. The azure monitor is a basic one, but it is comprehensive if we compare it with others. But, when comparing to OMS, The Azure monitor is a basic one that we can use for resource metrics and activity logs.

Assume, if somebody stopped virtual machine that we want to get alerted or if the CPU utilization in one of the virtual machines is beyond 90 percent, then we want to get alerted. We can define these rules in Azure monitor. Once the condition within the rule is satisfied, then we can take a number of actions as a result of that. We can trigger Azure automation Runbook, azure function, logic app, or third party API.

Health Monitoring

Azure service health

• It provides timely and personalized information when problems in Azure services impact your services.
• It helps you prepare for upcoming planned maintenance.

Azure resource health

• Resource health helps you diagnose and get support when an Azure issue impacts your resources.
• It can be used to view the current and past health of your Azure resources.
• It provides technical support when you need help with Azure service issues.

Advanced monitoring

• Operations management suite (OMS): It includes monitoring, alerting, and alert remediation capabilities across cloud and on-premises assets.
• Log analytics: It collects data generated by resources in our cloud and on-premises environments and from other monitoring tools to provide analysis across multiple resources.
• Network Watcher: It monitors our VM and its associated resources as they relate to the network that they are present.