Domain 3 of 3 · Chapter 4 of 4

Monitoring Tools

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Included in this chapter:

  • The three tools, by the question each one answers
  • Azure Advisor: personalized best-practice recommendations
  • Azure Service Health: Azure-side issues that affect you
  • Azure Monitor and its sub-components
  • Recognizing these questions on the exam

Azure Advisor vs Service Health vs Azure Monitor

AspectAzure AdvisorAzure Service HealthAzure Monitor
Question it answersHow do I optimize and follow best practices?Is Azure itself having an issue that affects me?How are my resources and apps actually behaving?
Data sourceYour resource configuration and usageAzure platform incidents and maintenanceMetrics and logs from your resources/apps
Typical useResize underused VMs, enable backup, cut costSee outages, planned maintenance, advisoriesDashboards, log queries, alerts, app APM
ScopeYour own resourcesServices and regions you useYour own resources and applications
CostFreeFreeFree service; pay for data ingested/retained

Decision tree

Want best-practicerecommendations?YesNoAzure Advisor5 categories of adviceIs AZURE itself havingan issue / maintenance?YesNoAzure Service Healthoutages, maintenance, advisoriesNeed telemetry fromMY resources/apps?metrics/logs/alertslive app healthAzure MonitorLog Analytics + alertsApplication InsightsAPM: perf, availability, exceptions
Cheat sheet

Cheat sheet

  • Match the monitoring tool to the question it answers
  • Use Azure Advisor for personalized best-practice recommendations
  • Azure Advisor itself is free
  • Advisor has exactly five recommendation categories
  • Advisor's security recommendations come from Microsoft Defender for Cloud
  • Advisor recommends resizing VMs, enabling resilience, and cutting waste
  • Azure Service Health reports Azure-side issues affecting your subscription
  • Service Health covers service issues, planned maintenance, and health advisories
  • Service Health is personalized; the Azure Status page is global
  • Azure Resource Health drills down to one specific resource
  • Azure Monitor is the umbrella platform for your own telemetry
  • Metrics are numeric points over time; logs are queryable event records
  • Log Analytics queries Azure Monitor log data with KQL in a workspace
  • Log Analytics is part of Azure Monitor, not a separate product
  • Azure Monitor alerts proactively notify you when a condition is met
  • Alerts notify and can trigger automation, but don't self-heal by default
  • Application Insights is the APM feature for live applications
  • Web-app performance, availability, usage, or exceptions points to Application Insights
  • "Optimize" or "best practices" maps to Azure Advisor
  • "Outage" or "maintenance" maps to Azure Service Health
  • "Metrics," "logs," or "alerts" maps to Azure Monitor
  • Advisor Score is one percentage across the five WAF-aligned categories
  • Postpone or dismiss an Advisor recommendation to drop it from the score
  • An action group defines who is notified and what runs when an alert fires
  • Smart Detection flags anomalies automatically with no thresholds to set
  • Live Metrics streams real-time activity but retains nothing
  • Azure Service Health is three views: Azure Status, Service Health, Resource Health

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References

  1. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/advisor/advisor-overview
  2. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-health/overview
  3. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/overview
  4. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-health/azure-status-overview
  5. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/logs/log-analytics-overview
  6. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/alerts/alerts-overview
  7. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/app/app-insights-overview