📊 Monitor This! Azure Tools to Keep an Eye on Everything

Welcome back, observability enthusiast!
Last week, we looked at Identity in Azure and how it secures access to your cloud environment. Today in “Back to the cloud”, we shift focus to Monitoring and Management — the tools that help you track, troubleshoot, and tune your cloud setup.

✅ 1. Azure Monitor

📈 What is it?

A centralized platform for collecting, analyzing, and acting on telemetry (performance, diagnostics, logs, metrics) from your Azure resources.

🔍 Key Components:

📌 Azure Monitor is the umbrella tool that connects to many services including VMs, containers, apps, databases, and custom apps.

✅ Use Azure Monitor to:

• View performance data

• Create dashboards

• Set up alerts for metrics/log events

• Route logs to other services (like Event Hub or Storage)

🔍 2. Azure Activity Log vs Diagnostic Logs

📌 Activity Logs = who did what in Azure 📌 Diagnostic Logs = how the service behaved

🔎 3. Azure Log Analytics

🔬 What is it?

A query engine for analyzing log data collected by Azure Monitor.

• Uses a powerful language: Kusto Query Language (KQL)

• Central to investigating problems, trends, and usage

📌 Example use: Find all VMs with CPU usage over 80% in the past hour

💡 Log Analytics is part of Azure Monitor, and it's where you write advanced queries for troubleshooting and reporting.

🚨 4. Azure Alerts

• Triggered based on thresholds or patterns in metrics/logs.

• Can notify via email, SMS, or trigger automation (Logic Apps, webhooks).

• Use to detect:

  • High CPU usage

  • App errors

  • Unauthorized access attempts

📌 AZ-900 Tip: Alerts are proactive notifications that help you respond quickly.

🧠 5. Azure Service Health

🩺 What is it?

Tells you about issues that affect Azure services in real time, including:

• Outages

• Planned maintenance

• Health advisories

Types of Notifications:

📌 Service Health is personalized to your Azure region and services.

🔁 6. Azure Resource Health vs Service Health

📌 Service Health = platform-wide 📌 Resource Health = specific resource status (e.g., VM unavailable due to host failure)

⚙️ 7. Azure Automation

• Used to automate repetitive tasks in Azure (e.g., stop/start VMs, apply patches).

• Supports:

  • Runbooks (PowerShell or Python scripts)

  • Update Management (schedule patches)

  • Inventory collection (track what's installed)

📌 Helps reduce manual effort and enforce operational consistency.

🧠 Final Exam Tips – Monitoring & Management

✅ Summary Table – Monitoring & Management Tools