Why monitoring is essential in Azure - Why It Works

Introduction

Monitoring helps you keep an eye on your cloud services and infrastructure. It shows you if things are working well or if there are problems that need fixing quickly.

When you want to know if your website is up and running without waiting for users to complain

When you need to track how much memory or CPU your app is using to avoid crashes

When you want to get alerts if your database is slow or unreachable

When you want to see trends over time to plan for more resources before problems happen

When you want to improve your app by understanding how users interact with it

Commands

This command checks the CPU usage of a virtual machine every minute to see how busy it is.

Terminal

az monitor metrics list --resource /subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/resourceGroups/myResourceGroup/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/myVM --metric Percentage CPU --interval PT1M

Expected Output

[

  {

    "id": "/subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/resourceGroups/myResourceGroup/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/myVM/providers/microsoft.insights/metrics/Percentage CPU",

    "type": "Microsoft.Insights/metrics",

    "name": "Percentage CPU",

    "unit": "Percent",

    "timeseries": [

      {

        "data": [

          {"timeStamp": "2024-06-01T12:00:00Z", "average": 15.5},

          {"timeStamp": "2024-06-01T12:01:00Z", "average": 20.3}

        ]

      }

    ]

  }

]

→

--resource - Specifies the exact resource to monitor

→

--metric - Chooses which performance metric to check

→

--interval - Sets how often to check the metric

This command creates an alert that notifies you if the CPU usage goes above 80%, so you can fix problems fast.

Terminal

az monitor metrics alert create --name HighCPUAlert --resource-group myResourceGroup --scopes /subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/resourceGroups/myResourceGroup/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/myVM --condition "avg Percentage CPU > 80" --description "Alert when CPU usage is over 80%" --action-group myActionGroup

Expected Output

{

  "id": "/subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/resourceGroups/myResourceGroup/providers/microsoft.insights/metricAlerts/HighCPUAlert",

  "name": "HighCPUAlert",

  "type": "Microsoft.Insights/metricAlerts",

  "location": "global",

  "properties": {

    "description": "Alert when CPU usage is over 80%",

    "enabled": true

  }

}

→

--condition - Defines the rule that triggers the alert

→

--action-group - Specifies who or what gets notified

This command shows the last 5 important actions or changes made in your resource group to help you understand what happened.

Terminal

az monitor activity-log list --resource-group myResourceGroup --max-events 5

Expected Output

[

  {

    "eventName": {"value": "Start Virtual Machine", "localizedValue": "Start Virtual Machine"},

    "eventTimestamp": "2024-06-01T11:55:00Z",

    "resourceGroupName": "myResourceGroup",

    "status": {"value": "Succeeded", "localizedValue": "Succeeded"}

  },

  {

    "eventName": {"value": "Create Virtual Machine", "localizedValue": "Create Virtual Machine"},

    "eventTimestamp": "2024-05-30T09:00:00Z",

    "resourceGroupName": "myResourceGroup",

    "status": {"value": "Succeeded", "localizedValue": "Succeeded"}

  }

]

→

--max-events - Limits how many recent events to show

Key Concept

If you remember nothing else from this pattern, remember: monitoring helps you see problems early so you can fix them before users notice.

Common Mistakes

Not setting up alerts after checking metrics

You might miss critical problems because you are not notified automatically

Always create alerts for important metrics to get notified immediately

Checking metrics for the wrong resource or with wrong names

You get no data or wrong data, so you can't trust your monitoring

Double-check resource IDs and metric names before running commands

Ignoring activity logs

You miss understanding what changes caused issues

Regularly review activity logs to track changes and troubleshoot

Summary

Use 'az monitor metrics list' to check performance data like CPU usage.

Create alerts with 'az monitor metrics alert create' to get notified about problems.

Review activity logs with 'az monitor activity-log list' to see recent changes.