In Azure Monitor was introduced a new service that allows you to monitor virtual machines, called Azure Monitor for VMs. This service analyzes the performance data and the status of virtual machines, makes the monitor of the installed processes and examines its dependencies. This article shows the characteristics of the solution and describes the procedure to be followed to effect the activation.
Features of the solution
The service Azure Monitor for VMs is divided into three different perspectives:
- Health: the logical components present on board of the virtual machines are evaluated according to specific pre-configured criteria, generating alerts when certain conditions are met. This feature, at the moment, is present only for systems that reside in Azure.
- Performance: shows summary details of performance, from the guest operating system.
- Map: generates a map with the interconnections between the various components that reside on different systems.
This solution can be used on Windows and Linux virtual machines, regardless of the environment in which they reside (Azure, on-premises or at other cloud providers).
Azure Monitor for VMs requires the presence of a workspace of Log Analytics. Since this is a feature currently in preview, workspace are supported in these regions: West Central US, East US, West Europe and Southeast Asia. Enabling a Log Analytics workspace can occur according to these modes:
To identify the operating systems that are supported by this solution, please visit the Official Microsoft documentation.
How to enable Azure Monitor for VMs
To enable the solution for a single virtual machine, from the Azure Portal, it is possible to proceed by accessing the section Insights from the virtual machine:
Figure 1 – Enabling Azure Monitor for VMs on a single VM
Enabling the solution on a single virtual machine it is possible to choose which Log Analytics workspace use and possibly create a new one. The advice is to precede before with the creation of workspace, so you can assign a meaningful name. The workspace of Log Analytics must be configured as follows:
- You must have installed the solutions ServiceMap and InfrastructureInsights. The installation of this solutions can be done via JSON templates, according to the instructions in this document.
Figure 2 – Presence of solutions ServiceMap and InfrastructureInsights
- Must be configured to collect performance counters. This configuration can be done manually as described in this document, or through this Powershell script.
Figure 3 – Collecting the performance counters enabled on Log Analytics workspace
Azure Monitor for VMs requires Log Analytics agent on virtual machines, also the functionality of Map requires the installation of the Microsoft Dependency agent. This is an additional agent which relies on Log Analytics agent for the connection to the workspace.
If you want to enable the solution for systems in Azure, you can activate the Dependency agent using the appropriate extension, that do the installation. For virtual machines that reside on Azure you must install it manually or via a solution that automates the deployment (such as System Center Configuration Manager).
To enable this feature automatically on new virtual machines created in Azure environment and achieve a high level of compliance you can also use the Azure Policy. Through the Azure Policy you can:
- Deploy the Log Analytics agent and Dependency agent.
- Having a report on the status of compliance
- Start remediation actions for non-compliant VMs.
Figure 4 – Adding an Assignment
Figure 5 - Initiative definition to enable Azure Monitor for VMs
Figure 6 - Check of the state of compliance of the Policy
Consulting data collected from the solution
To analyze and identify critical operating system events, detect suboptimal performance and network issues, you can refer to the data provided by this solution directly from VM or using Azure Monitor, in case you want to have an aggregated view of the various virtual machines. All this allows you to detect and identify if problems are related to specific dependencies on other services.
Figure 7 – State of Health of a single virtual machine
Figure 8 – Performance gathered from multiple VMs, accessible by Azure Monitor
Figure 9 – Dependencies Map of various services present on VMs, accessible by Azure Monitor
For more information about using the features of Health you can consult this Microsoft documentation, while the article View Azure Monitor for VMs Map shows how to identify and analyze the dependencies detected from the solution.
Costs of the solution
By activating the solution Azure Monitor for VMs, the data collected by the virtual machines are sent and maintained in Azure Monitor and can depend on several factors, such as the number of logical disks and network adapters. The costs are those related to Azure Monitor, which has costs on the basis of the following elements:
- Data ingested and collected.
- Number of health monitored criteria.
- Alert rule created.
- Notifications sent.
Conclusions
The service Azure Monitor for VMs allowing you to have a fully integrated tool in Azure to monitor the virtual machines and to obtain a complete control of systems, regardless of where they reside. This solution is also particularly useful to conduct troubleshooting operations in a simple and immediate way. This service, although it is currently in preview, is already full enough and it will be enriched soon with new features.
