No matter the level of support your cloud provider offers, you still need to monitor your cloud systems.  That’s the only way you can know that your instances and applications are up, whether they’re running with the performance you need, and whether anyone has attempted to breach your infrastructure. When your cloud is Microsoft Azure, you can rely on Azure Monitor to gather the data you need to ensure your cloud is working.

Monitoring At All Levels

With Azure Monitor, data collection starts as soon as you purchase resources. The monitor creates activity logs to record the addition of new resources and changes to existing one. Metrics let you track how many resources you are consuming and how your resources are performing. Before you start reviewing logs, take time to determine the metrics that are important to you and measure your baseline so you’ll know which numbers indicate trouble.

Monitor Applications

Application monitoring for web servers works with common web development languages like java and Node.js. It also integrates with tools such as Jira. Relevant metrics include number of requests and response times, with slow response perhaps indicating the application, database, or CPU is overloaded. Azure Monitor for Containers helps you monitor your container workloads.

Monitor Infrastructure

Keep an eye on the performance of your infrastructure, including virtual machines and containers, along with storage and databases. For VMs, keep an eye on CPU utilization figures. Relevant memory metrics include available memory and memory pages. For storage, disk I/O numbers including disk read and disk write can help you determine if you need faster disks or a VM with greater maximum IOPS.

Monitor Network

Azure Monitor tracks network behavior, capturing details needed to verify security and troubleshoot routing problems. Bytes or TCP segments sent and received are the primary metrics. Either spikes or unexpected troughs can indicate problems in the network.

Analyzing Azure Monitor Data

The collected data is available through your Azure portal, with basic data on the Overview page. You can click on graphs to drill down further and create views in Azure Metrics Explorer. Application Insights helps you make use of Azure Monitor’s data to identify problems with web applications.

Azure Monitor can alert you to potential problems in your systems, with real-time alerting triggered by rules based on your metrics.

Alternatives to Azure Monitor

The flexibility of Azure means you aren’t limited to using Azure Monitor for monitoring Azure resources. The ELK stack is an open source framework for collecting and managing logs and can easily be applied to systems deployed in Microsoft Azure.

Keeping an eye on cloud resources is important to make sure you get the benefits and performance you expect from cloud. Prescient Solutions Microsoft Azure services help you design, implement, and support your Azure cloud. Contact us to learn more about getting started in Azure.