Azure Insights
Azure Insights is a set of monitoring and analytics services within Microsoft Azure,
designed to provide deep visibility into the performance, availability, and usage of your applications and resources.
⚙️ What It Does
- Collects telemetry from applications, infrastructure, and platform services.
- Analyzes data to identify trends, performance bottlenecks, and potential issues.
- Provides actionable insights through alerts, dashboards, and reports.
📊 Key Features
- Application Insights: Monitor application performance, detect errors, and track user behavior.
- Log Analytics: Query logs from Azure resources to diagnose problems and gain operational insights.
- Metrics & Dashboards: Visualize performance metrics and resource usage across your environment.
- Alerts & Automation: Set thresholds, trigger notifications, or automate actions when issues occur.
🧩 Why Use Azure Insights
- Identify and resolve performance issues faster.
- Ensure application reliability and availability.
- Optimize resource usage and operational efficiency.
- Gain actionable intelligence to make informed business and technical decisions.
✅ Example Use Case
For a web application running on Azure App Service:
- Track response times and request failures with Application Insights.
- Use Log Analytics to investigate errors in backend services.
- Configure alerts to notify the team when performance thresholds are breached.
🔍 What Azure Insights Is
Azure Insights are curated monitoring experiences in Azure Monitor, designed to give you ready-to-use, service-specific dashboards, metrics, and alerts without building everything from scratch.
They:
- Collect and analyze a subset of telemetry for a given Azure service.
- Present it in visual, interactive dashboards.
- Often include out-of-the-box alerting.
- Are optimized for specific workloads like VMs, containers, networks, or applications.
📊 Key Types of Azure Insights
| Insight Type |
Purpose |
Key Capabilities |
| Azure VM Insights |
Monitor Azure VMs & VM Scale Sets |
Performance & health tracking, process monitoring, dependency mapping |
| Azure Container Insights |
Monitor AKS & container workloads |
Node, pod, and container metrics; Kubernetes API integration; container logs |
| Azure Network Insights |
Monitor network resources |
Health & metrics for VNets, gateways, load balancers; dependency mapping |
| Application Insights |
Monitor app performance & usage |
Request rates, response times, failure rates, dependency tracking, user analytics |
⚙️ How It Works
- Enable the Insight in the Azure Portal for your resource.
- Azure Monitor starts collecting metrics, logs, and traces relevant to that service.
- Data is visualized in prebuilt dashboards (often powered by Azure Monitor Workbooks).
- Customize queries, alerts, and visualizations as needed.
🚀 Why It’s Useful for You
For multi-tenant SaaS, claims-based security, and modular architecture, Azure Insights can:
- Serve as a baseline monitoring layer for each tenant’s resources.
- Feed into centralized dashboards for cross-service visibility.
- Integrate with Log Analytics for deeper, scenario-based troubleshooting.
- Reduce the need to build custom monitoring UIs from scratch.
Azure Insights High-Level Architecture
🏗 High-Level Architecture
Code Flow:
[Azure Resources] → [Azure Insights] → [Log Analytics Workspace] → [Workbooks / Alerts / APIs] → [Custom Angular Dashboards]
1️⃣ Data Collection Layer
| Component |
Role |
Notes |
| Azure Insights |
Service-specific telemetry collection |
VM Insights, Container Insights, Network Insights, Application Insights |
| Diagnostic Settings |
Route logs & metrics to Log Analytics |
Enable per-resource or via ARM templates |
| Azure Monitor Agent (AMA) |
Unified data collection |
Replace legacy agents; supports multi-homing for multi-tenant scenarios |
2️⃣ Centralized Processing Layer
Log Analytics Workspace
- Acts as the single source of truth (SSOT) for telemetry.
- Supports Kusto Query Language (KQL) for deep analysis.
- Partitioned by tenant using custom dimensions (e.g., TenantId tag).
Data Retention Strategy
- Short-term (30–90 days) in Log Analytics for fast queries.
- Long-term archival in Azure Storage for compliance.
3️⃣ Visualization & Alerting Layer
| Tool |
Purpose |
Multi-Tenant Adaptation |
| Azure Monitor Workbooks |
Interactive dashboards |
Parameterize by TenantId for scoped views |
| Azure Alerts |
Proactive notifications |
Dynamic alert rules per tenant or service |
| Application Insights Analytics |
App-level performance & usage |
Embed charts in Angular front-end via API |
4️⃣ Integration Layer
- Azure Monitor REST API: Pull metrics/logs into Angular static site using serverless functions (Azure Functions) to secure API calls.
- Power BI Embedded: Richer, paginated reports; can be embedded in training modules for learners.
5️⃣ Security & Governance
- RBAC + Azure AD App Roles: Ensure each tenant sees only their own telemetry.
- Resource Tags: Tag resources with TenantId, Environment, ServiceType for filtering.
- Policy Enforcement: Azure Policy to ensure Insights are enabled for all new resources.
📌 Deployment Blueprint (Modular)
- Baseline ARM/Bicep Template: Deploys Insights + Diagnostic Settings + Log Analytics linkage.
- Tenant Onboarding Script: Adds tags, alert rules, and workbook parameters.
- Angular Integration Module: Consumes telemetry via secured API; displays charts using Chart.js or ngx-charts.
- Training Mode: Simulated telemetry for learners to practice troubleshooting.
🚀 Benefits for Your Use Case
- Scalable: Works for 10 tenants or 10,000.
- Maintainable: Modular templates and scripts.
- Educational: Real or simulated data for scenario-based learning.
- Secure: Tenant isolation at data and UI layers.
