The service that allows you to monitor virtual machines has been made available in Azure Monitor, called Azure Monitor for VMs. This service allows you to analyze system performance data and makes a map that identifies all dependencies of virtual machines and their processes. The recommended way to enable this solution for different systems is through Azure Policy adoption. This article describes the steps to take to activate it using this method, taking up various concepts related to Azure governance.
Key Features of Azure Monitor for VMs
Azure Monitor for VMscan be used on Windows and Linux virtual machines, regardless of the environment in which they reside (Azure, on-premises or at other cloud providers) and includes the following areas:
- Performance: shows summary details of performance, from the guest operating system. The solution has powerful data aggregation and filtering capabilities that enable you to meet the challenge of monitoring performance for a very large number of systems. This allows you to easily monitor the resource usage status of all VMs and easily identify those that have performance issues.
- Maps: generates a map with the interconnections between the various components that reside on different systems. Maps show how VMs and processes interact with each other and can identify dependencies on third-party services. The solution also allows you to check for connection errors, count connections in real time, network bytes sent and received by processes and latencies encountered at the service level.
Enabling through Azure Policy
The Azure Policy allow to apply and force compliance criteria and related remediation actions on a large scale. To enable this feature automatically on virtual machines in your Azure environment and achieve a high level of compliance, it is recommended that you use Azure Policies. Using 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.
One requirement to check before activating is the presence of the solution VMInsights in the Azure Monitor Log Analytics workspace that will be used to store monitor data.
Figure 1 – Configuring the Analytics log workspace
Selecting the desired workspace triggers the installation of the solution VM Insights which allows you to collect performance counters and metrics for all virtual machines connected to that workspace.
To activate Azure Monitor for VMs policy just select the relevant onboarding tile on the main screen of the solution.
Figure 2 – Selecting Azure Policy as a enable method
The following blade will show the coverage status of the service and provide the ability to assign policies for its activation.
Figure 3 – Assigning the Initiative at the Management Group level
The Azure Management Groups, organize different subscriptions into logical containers, on which define, implement and verify government policies needed.
The Initiatives, which are a set of multiple Azure Policy, can be assigned at the Resource Group level, Subscription or Management Group. It is also possible to exclude certain resources from the application of policies.
In this regard, the policies for enabling Azure Monitor for VMs are grouped into a single "initiative", "Enable Azure Monitor for VMs" that includes the following policies:
- Audit Dependency agent deployment – VM image (OS) unlisted
- Audit Log Analytics agent deployment – VM image (OS) unlisted
- Deploy Dependency agent for Linux VMs
- Deploy Dependency agent for Windows VMs
- Deploy Log Analytics agent for Linux VMs
- Deploy Log Analytics agent for Windows VMs
This Initiative is recommended to be assigned at the Management Group level.
Figure 4 – Configuring the association
Among the parameters you are prompted to specify the Log Analytics workspace and optionally you can specify any remediation tasks.
Following the assignment, you can evaluate the State of compliance in detail and if it is necessary apply remediation actions.
Figure 5 – Verification of Initiative compliance status
Once the enable process is complete, you can analyze the system performance data and the maps created to identify all the dependencies of the virtual machines and their processes.
Figure 6 – Performance collected for systems
Figure 7 – Map with the interconnections between various systems
Figure 8 – Map showing connection details
An effective method to make these data easily accessible and to analyze them in a simple way is the use of Workbooks, interactive documents that allow you to better interpret information and do in-depth analysis. In this document of Microsoft you can consult the list of related Workbooks included in Azure Monitor for VMs and how to create your own custom.
Conclusions
This article demonstrates how you can enable the solution Azure Monitor for VMs thanks to the adoption of the Azure Policy in a simple way, fast and effective. The solution provides very useful information that typically needs to be collected on different systems in your environment. Increasing the complexity and amount of services on Azure makes it essential to adopt tools like Azure Policy, to have effective governance policies. Furthermore, with the introduction of Azure Arc it will be possible to extend these Azure management and governance practices to different environments, thus facilitating the implementation of features present in Azure on all infrastructure components.
