Microsoft has a long-standing reputation as an industry leader in delivering enterprise-grade platform services that offer scalable and reliable application operations. However, monitoring and managing Microsoft Azure systems can be challenging due to the complexity and overlapping services. Even for experienced staff, using first-party solutions for Microsoft Azure monitoring requires significant effort. In some cases, multiple tools may perform similar functions, adding to the complexity.
The apps deployed on Microsoft Azure are designed on a segregated and highly dynamic architecture. Monitoring apps and services is crucial to maximize availability, performance, reliability, and usage.
Microsoft Azure Monitor: Introduction and Features
Microsoft Azure Monitor is a comprehensive monitoring tool that allows you to collect, analyze, and respond to data from both on-premises and cloud environments, helping you enhance the availability and performance of your applications and services.
With Microsoft Azure Monitor, data from every layer and component of your system is gathered and aggregated into a centralized data platform. This data platform also connects data across multiple Azure subscriptions and tenants, making it easier to correlate and evaluate data using a single set of tools. This allows you to analyze and visualize how your apps are functioning and automatically respond to system events.
Additionally, Microsoft Azure Monitor offers Azure Monitor SCOM Managed Instance, which facilitates the migration of your on-premises System Center Operations Manager (Operations Manager) installation to Azure. This helps streamline your monitoring and management processes, allowing you to leverage the benefits of Azure for your operations.
How does Microsoft Azure Monitor Work?
Microsoft Azure Monitoring collects data from Azure resources, applications, and operating systems. The data collected depends on the resource and can be a metric, a log, or both, which is then utilized for analysis, visualization, alerts, automation, and so on.
What data does it collect?
Microsoft Azure Monitor collects data and the information from various sources, including services, operating systems, applications, and resource offerings. This includes the following:
1. Application monitoring data: Performance of various applications on different platforms and can be collected and analyzed using Application Insights.
2. Guest OS monitoring data: Information about the operating system the program runs. Windows Event logs, Syslogs, and IIS logs can be loaded into Azure Monitor.
3. Azure monitoring resource data: Functioning of different Azure resources. Resource logs and metrics are utilized to monitor telemetry data.
4. Azure subscription monitoring data: All the details regarding the management and operation of subscriptions in Azure. Service health and Activity Logs are used to obtain this data.
5. Azure tenant monitoring data: Information about services such as Azure Active Directory. It stores all sign-in activities and the history of changes made.
6. Custom sources: Data from custom sources like REST clients, using the Data Collector API. This is particularly useful when monitoring resources outside the Azure ecosystem.
Monitoring Information
Microsoft Azure Monitor collects data in the form of metrics or logs. The metric data type represents numerical values that describe the source’s time-dependent characteristics while the log data types are the source’s structured log files. Let us go through them in greater detail in the following part.
Monitoring and visibility
Observability is the ability to assess the state of an internal system based on the data it generates. An observability solution examines output data, delivers a health evaluation of the system, and provides actionable insights for fixing issues throughout your IT infrastructure.
Monitoring is a critical component of observability, as it involves the collection and analysis of data from IT systems to gather insights about their performance and health.
The observability pillars are the various data types a monitoring tool must collect and analyze to offer adequate monitoring system observability. The observability pillars are typically called metrics, logs, and distributed traces. Microsoft Azure Monitor augments these pillars with “changes.”
When a system is observable, users can identify the root cause of performance issues by inspecting the generated data, without the need for additional testing or coding. Microsoft Azure Monitor enables observability by correlating and aggregating data from multiple pillars across monitored resources. It provides a standardized collection of tools for correlating and analyzing data across different Azure subscriptions, tenants, and other services’ data, enhancing the overall observability of your system.
Conclusion
In general, Microsoft Azure Monitor is a centralized platform that allows you to manage and monitor the performance of your applications and systems & the resources that those things rely on. If you integrate Azure Monitor with many other systems like SAP, Salesforce, etc. and use custom log queries, you may additionally have the benefit of performing customized performance tracking.
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