Describe Azure Management and Governance · Topic 4 of 4
Monitoring Tools in Azure
AZ-900 monitoring tools: Azure Advisor, Azure Service Health, Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Azure Monitor alerts and Application Insights compared.
- 4 min
- Advisor recommends improvements in five categories: reliability, security, performance, cost optimization and operational excellence.
- Service Health covers Azure status, personalised Service Health and Resource Health.
- Azure Monitor gathers metrics and logs from your resources and applications.
What it is
Azure provides three families of monitoring tools, and the exam asks you to tell them apart. Azure Advisor recommends improvements. Azure Service Health reports problems and planned work on Azure itself. Azure Monitor collects and analyses data from your own resources and applications.
How it works
Azure Advisor
Azure Advisor analyses your resources and gives personalised recommendations. They fall into five categories.
| Category | Example recommendation |
|---|---|
| Reliability | Use availability zones or backups for a critical VM |
| Security | Fix a weakness found by Defender for Cloud |
| Performance | Resize a database that is running slowly |
| Cost optimization | Shut down or resize an idle virtual machine |
| Operational excellence | Follow better deployment and management practices |
Advisor is free to use and works through the portal.
Azure Service Health
Service Health tells you about problems in Azure that affect you. It has three parts.
- Azure status: a global view of the health of all Azure services and regions.
- Service Health: a personalised view of incidents, planned maintenance and health advisories for the services and regions you use.
- Resource Health: the health of one specific resource, such as a single virtual machine, and whether the cause is Azure or your own configuration.
You can create alerts so that you are told when a service issue or planned maintenance affects you.
Azure Monitor
Azure Monitor collects, analyses and acts on data from your Azure resources, applications and on premises systems. It works with two kinds of data: metrics, which are numbers over time such as CPU use, and logs, which are records of events.
- Log Analytics is the tool for querying log data stored in a Log Analytics workspace. You write queries in Kusto Query Language (KQL).
- Azure Monitor alerts notify you or start an automatic action when a metric crosses a threshold, a log query finds a condition or an activity occurs. Alerts send messages through action groups, which list who to notify, for example by email or text message.
- Application Insights monitors the performance of a live web application, including request rates, response times, failures and dependencies. It helps developers find slow or failing parts of an app.
Metrics and logs
Azure Monitor collects two kinds of data, and the difference matters.
| Data | What it is | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Metrics | Numbers measured over time | CPU percentage of a virtual machine |
| Logs | Records of events, stored and queried | Sign in attempts or errors |
Log data is stored in a Log Analytics workspace, and you query it with Kusto Query Language (KQL).
Alerts and action groups
An alert watches for a condition, such as CPU above 90 percent for five minutes. When it fires, it uses an action group to decide who is told and what happens next. An action group can send email or text messages, call a webhook or start an automation.
An alert without an action group fires but nobody hears about it.
Which tool answers which question
| The question | Tool |
|---|---|
| Is Azure itself having a problem in my region? | Azure Service Health |
| Is this one virtual machine healthy? | Resource Health |
| How can I reduce cost or improve reliability? | Azure Advisor |
| Why is my web app slow? | Application Insights |
| What is the CPU of my server over the last day? | Azure Monitor metrics |
Advisor in practice
Advisor might recommend using availability zones for a critical virtual machine, which is a reliability tip, or resizing an idle one, which is a cost tip. It recommends. It does not change anything on its own.
How the exam asks about this
- "Which service reports an Azure outage that affects you?" Azure Service Health.
- "Which service recommends cost and security improvements?" Azure Advisor.
- "Which feature notifies the team when CPU is too high?" An Azure Monitor alert with an action group.
- "Which language queries Log Analytics?" Kusto Query Language.
What to remember for the exam
- Advisor recommends improvements in five categories: reliability, security, performance, cost optimization and operational excellence.
- Service Health covers Azure status, personalised Service Health and Resource Health.
- Azure Monitor gathers metrics and logs from your resources and applications.
- Log Analytics queries logs with KQL.
- Azure Monitor alerts notify through action groups.
- Application Insights monitors the performance of web applications.
"Is Azure itself having a problem?" is Service Health. "How can I cut costs or improve reliability?" is Advisor. "Why is my app slow?" is Application Insights.
Common mistakes
Using Azure Monitor to report an Azure outage. Service Health reports platform issues. Monitor watches your own resources.
Expecting Advisor to alert on live incidents. Advisor gives recommendations, not real time alerts.
Confusing Service Health with Resource Health. Service Health covers services and regions. Resource Health covers one resource.
Forgetting that alerts need an action group to notify anyone. The action group says who is told and how.
Check yourself
Which tool recommends ways to improve reliability, security, performance, cost and operations?
Azure Advisor.
Which language do you use to query data in Log Analytics?
Kusto Query Language (KQL).
Which feature of Azure Monitor tracks the performance of a web application?
Application Insights.
Topic 4 of 4 in Describe Azure Management and Governance
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