Azure Monitor

Azure Monitor is Microsoft Azure’s end-to-end monitoring and observability service. It collects, analyzes, and acts on telemetry data from your applications, infrastructure, and network resources—whether in Azure, on-premises, or in other clouds.

⚙️ What Azure Monitor Does

• Collects Data: From Azure resources, applications, guest OS, containers, and custom sources.
• Analyzes Data: Uses Kusto Query Language (KQL) in Log Analytics and provides dashboards and metrics.
• Acts on Data: Alerts, autoscaling, and integrations with Logic Apps, Event Hub, or ITSM tools.

📊 Key Features

• Metrics: Real-time performance data (CPU, memory, latency).
• Logs: Detailed event and diagnostic information.
• Application Insights: End-to-end monitoring of app performance and dependencies.
• Alerts & Automation: Notify or trigger remediation actions.
• Workbooks: Interactive dashboards for visualization.
• Network Insights: Monitor connectivity and performance across VNets.

🧩 Why It’s Useful

• For Developers: Trace requests, find bottlenecks, and debug issues.
• For Ops/IT: Monitor infrastructure health and trigger auto-healing actions.
• For Leadership: Provides SLA, uptime, and performance insights.

✅ Example Use Case

For a multi-tenant SaaS application:

• Alert when a tenant’s workload spikes CPU usage.
• Identify slow API calls and map dependencies.
• Automatically scale instances when traffic surges.

1️⃣ What is Azure Monitor

Azure Monitor is Microsoft’s end-to-end observability platform for Azure, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments. It collects, analyzes, and acts on telemetry from:

• Applications (via Application Insights)
• Infrastructure (VMs, containers, networks, databases)
• Platform services (Azure Activity Logs, metrics)
• Custom sources (via APIs, agents, or SDKs)

It stores this data in a common data platform (metrics, logs, traces, change tracking) so you can:

• Visualize it in dashboards & workbooks
• Query it with Kusto Query Language (KQL)
• Trigger alerts & automated actions
• Integrate with ITSM, DevOps, and third-party tools

2️⃣ How to Configure Azure Monitor

Step-by-Step Setup

1. Access Azure Monitor: In the Azure Portal → Monitor (left menu), or from a specific resource’s Monitoring section.
2. Plan Your Monitoring Strategy: Define what to monitor, decide retention & alert rules, tag resources for tenant/environment filtering.
3. Enable Data Collection:
   • Platform Metrics: Collected automatically for Azure resources.
   • Diagnostic Settings: Route logs/metrics to Log Analytics, Event Hub, or Storage.
   • Azure Monitor Agent (AMA): Install on VMs for guest OS metrics/logs.
   • Application Insights: Add SDK or auto-instrumentation for app telemetry.
4. Configure Alerts:
   • Metric alerts (e.g., CPU > 80% for 5 mins)
   • Log alerts (KQL queries)
   • Action Groups (email, SMS, webhook, Logic App)
5. Visualize Data:
   • Use Workbooks for interactive dashboards
   • Use Metrics Explorer for quick charts
   • Embed charts into your own apps via API

3️⃣ Best Practices for an Optimized Azure Monitor

Area	Best Practice	Why It Matters
Scope & Strategy	Monitor only what’s needed; use tags for filtering	Reduces noise & cost
Data Collection	Use AMA instead of legacy agents; enable only required logs	Improves performance & lowers ingestion costs
Retention	Short-term in Log Analytics (30–90 days), archive to Storage for long-term	Balances cost & compliance
Alerting	Use dynamic thresholds & suppression	Avoids alert fatigue
Dashboards	Parameterize Workbooks (e.g., by TenantId)	Enables multi-tenant views
Cost Control	Review Azure Monitor Usage & Costs monthly	Prevents runaway ingestion costs
Automation	Use Logic Apps or Functions for auto-remediation	Reduces MTTR (Mean Time to Recovery)
Security	Apply RBAC & Azure AD App Roles to monitoring data	Ensures tenant isolation

4️⃣ How to Use Azure Monitor in an Optimized Way

• Filter at Source: Collect only relevant logs (e.g., Error and Warning levels).
• Leverage Sampling in Application Insights to reduce ingestion volume without losing trends.
• Aggregate Metrics before sending to Log Analytics (e.g., 1-min averages instead of per-second data).
• Use Workbooks Instead of Exporting Data to save costs and avoid duplication.
• Integrate with Automation: e.g., trigger scale-out via Azure Automation or Functions if CPU spikes.

💡 Pro Tip for Multi-Tenant SaaS

• Tag all resources with TenantId and Environment.
• Create parameterized Workbooks that filter by these tags.
• Expose filtered dashboards in your Angular platform via the Azure Monitor REST API — so each tenant sees only their telemetry.