Azure Monitoring and Tools

In Chapter 9, Azure Resource Deployment and Management, you learned how to describe the Azure portal and Azure Cloud Shell, including the Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell, and you learned about Azure Arc’s purpose, and Azure Resource Manager and Azure Resource Manager templates.

This chapter will outline the monitoring capabilities and tooling available in Azure and will primarily focus on the Describe Azure management and governance module from the Skills Measured section of the AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals exam.

Note

You can find the detailed AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals exam skills area in the Appendix, Assessing AZ-900 Exam Skills of this book.

By the end of this chapter, you will be able to answer questions on the following confidently:

• Azure Advisor
• Azure Monitor, including Log Analytics, Azure Monitor alerts, and Application Insights
• Azure Service Health

In addition, this chapter’s goal is to take your knowledge...

Azure Advisor

Azure Advisor is an included, no-cost service that provides advice on optimizing your Azure resources. It provides personalized and actionable best practice recommendations based on usage analysis and can be accessed directly within the portal. It is recommended to use Azure Advisor and take action based on the recommendations. To view Azure Advisor, as shown in Figure 10.1, log in to the Azure portal:

Figure 10.1 – Azure Advisor recommendations prompt screen

Azure Advisor recommendations are available across the following categories, and the URLs point to the complete list of recommendations available for each category (Table 10.1):

Azure Monitor

Azure Monitor is an included service that provides actionable insights into the health, availability, and performance of Azure and on-premises environments by collecting and analyzing logs and metrics (“telemetry”). It allows you to find and fix problems faster, optimize your workload’s performance, and then provide actions to remediate and alert; it provides all these insights from within the portal.

Azure Monitor collects resources and platform data from the following data sources:

• PaaS resources such as applications and databases
• IaaS resources, including VMs, containers, virtual desktops, databases, and storage
• On-premises resources via Azure Monitor, agent-based, or Syslog-based for appliances

With Azure Monitor, you can create alerts to notify individuals, such as an administrator or resource owner, when certain conditions are triggered. This could be when a resource exceeds a set threshold, when a resource is stopped...

Azure Service Health

Azure Service Health is an included, no-cost service that provides a personalized view of the health of all your Azure resources. It provides guidance and notifications, such as planned maintenance and other advisories, on the resource health that are specific to you.

These actionable insights are provided directly within the portal as a subset of the Azure Monitor service. These insights allow you to be alerted to notifications or a health status change so that you can evaluate the situation and take any actions you deem necessary. In addition, you can download reports and Root Cause Analyses (RCAs).

The difference between Azure Service Health and the Azure status page is that the status page is a public-facing website that requires “no login.” It has a global view of all the services across all regions and is useful to get a quicker and bigger picture of incidents that have a widespread impact.

Note

You can access the Azure status page...

Summary

This chapter included complete coverage of the AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals exam skills area: Describe monitoring tools in Azure.

In this chapter, you learned how to describe the purpose of Azure Advisor, Azure Service Health, and Azure Monitor, including Log Analytics, Azure Monitor alerts, and Application Insights.

Further knowledge beyond the required exam content was provided to prepare for a real-world, day-to-day Azure-focused role.

In the next chapter, the Appendix, Assessing AZ-900 Exam Skills, you will find an overview of the “skills measured” by the certification and potential topics the exam may cover.

Exam Readiness Drill – Chapter Review Questions

Apart from a solid understanding of key concepts, being able to think quickly under time pressure is a skill that will help you ace your certification exam. That is why working on these skills early on in your learning journey is key.

Chapter review questions are designed to improve your test-taking skills progressively with each chapter you learn and review your understanding of key concepts in the chapter at the same time. You’ll find these at the end of each chapter.

How To Access These Resources

To learn how to access these resources, head over to the chapter titled Chapter 11, Accessing the Online Practice Resources.

To open the Chapter Review Questions for this chapter, perform the following steps:

1. Click the link – https://packt.link/AZ900E2_CH10.

Alternatively, you can scan the following QR code (Figure 10.8):

Figure 10.8 – QR code that opens Chapter Review...

Working On Timing

Target: Your aim is to keep the score the same while trying to answer these questions as quickly as possible. Here’s an example of how your next attempts should look like:

Category	Recommendation	URL
Cost	Provided for optimizing and reducing Azure subscription spend	https://packt.link/Hz5fc ...

Attempt	Score	Time Taken
Attempt 5	77%	21 mins 30 seconds
Attempt 6	78%	18 mins 34 seconds
Attempt 7	76%	14 mins 44 seconds

Table 10.2 – Sample timing practice drills on the online platform

Note

The time limits shown in the above table are just examples. Set your own time limits with each attempt based on the time limit of the quiz on the website.

With each new attempt, your score should stay above 75% while your “time taken...

Additional Information and Study References

This section provides links to additional exam information and study references.

• Microsoft Learn certification further information:
  • AZ-900 - Microsoft Azure Fundamentals exam guide: https://packt.link/ya9p0
  • AZ-900 - Microsoft Azure Fundamentals study guide: https://packt.link/SGRsg
• Microsoft Learn training further information:
  • AZ-900 - Microsoft Azure Fundamentals course: https://packt.link/DCNfg

The rest of the chapter is locked

Azure Monitor

Azure Monitor is an included service that provides actionable insights into the health, availability, and performance of Azure and on-premises environments by collecting and analyzing logs and metrics (“telemetry”). It allows you to find and fix problems faster, optimize your workload’s performance, and then provide actions to remediate and alert; it provides all these insights from within the portal.

Azure Monitor collects resources and platform data from the following data sources:

• PaaS resources such as applications and databases
• IaaS resources, including VMs, containers, virtual desktops, databases, and storage
• On-premises resources via Azure Monitor, agent-based, or Syslog-based for appliances

With Azure Monitor, you can create alerts to notify individuals, such as an administrator or resource owner, when certain conditions are triggered. This could be when a resource exceeds a set threshold, when a resource is stopped...

Azure Service Health

Azure Service Health is an included, no-cost service that provides a personalized view of the health of all your Azure resources. It provides guidance and notifications, such as planned maintenance and other advisories, on the resource health that are specific to you.

These actionable insights are provided directly within the portal as a subset of the Azure Monitor service. These insights allow you to be alerted to notifications or a health status change so that you can evaluate the situation and take any actions you deem necessary. In addition, you can download reports and Root Cause Analyses (RCAs).

The difference between Azure Service Health and the Azure status page is that the status page is a public-facing website that requires “no login.” It has a global view of all the services across all regions and is useful to get a quicker and bigger picture of incidents that have a widespread impact.

Note

You can access the Azure status page...

Summary

This chapter included complete coverage of the AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals exam skills area: Describe monitoring tools in Azure.

In this chapter, you learned how to describe the purpose of Azure Advisor, Azure Service Health, and Azure Monitor, including Log Analytics, Azure Monitor alerts, and Application Insights.

Further knowledge beyond the required exam content was provided to prepare for a real-world, day-to-day Azure-focused role.

In the next chapter, the Appendix, Assessing AZ-900 Exam Skills, you will find an overview of the “skills measured” by the certification and potential topics the exam may cover.

Exam Readiness Drill – Chapter Review Questions

Apart from a solid understanding of key concepts, being able to think quickly under time pressure is a skill that will help you ace your certification exam. That is why working on these skills early on in your learning journey is key.

Chapter review questions are designed to improve your test-taking skills progressively with each chapter you learn and review your understanding of key concepts in the chapter at the same time. You’ll find these at the end of each chapter.

How To Access These Resources

To learn how to access these resources, head over to the chapter titled Chapter 11, Accessing the Online Practice Resources.

To open the Chapter Review Questions for this chapter, perform the following steps:

1. Click the link – https://packt.link/AZ900E2_CH10.

Alternatively, you can scan the following QR code (Figure 10.8):

Figure 10.8 – QR code that opens Chapter Review...

Working On Timing

Target: Your aim is to keep the score the same while trying to answer these questions as quickly as possible. Here’s an example of how your next attempts should look like:

Additional Information and Study References

This section provides links to additional exam information and study references.

• Microsoft Learn certification further information:
  • AZ-900 - Microsoft Azure Fundamentals exam guide: https://packt.link/ya9p0
  • AZ-900 - Microsoft Azure Fundamentals study guide: https://packt.link/SGRsg
• Microsoft Learn training further information:
  • AZ-900 - Microsoft Azure Fundamentals course: https://packt.link/DCNfg