AZ-104 Microsoft Azure Administrator Exam

Understand Key Metrics and Their Significance

Azure Monitor is a powerful tool that plays an essential role in tracking and managing the performance and health of Azure resources. By collecting and aggregating metrics and logs, Azure Monitor helps maintain the availability, performance, and resilience of your system. Issues affecting your system can be promptly identified through notifications, allowing for quick response and management. To set up and view this monitoring data, you can use various platforms such as the Azure portal, PowerShell, Azure CLI, REST API, or client libraries.

Types of Metrics

In Azure, metrics are numerical values that represent aspects of system performance at specific points in time. These metrics are crucial as they can be aggregated, compared with other metrics, and analyzed for trends over periods. Some key metrics you should be aware of include:

• CPU usage: Indicates how much processing power is being utilized.
• Memory usage: Shows the amount of memory resources in use.
• Disk I/O: Captures the rate at which data is read from or written to disk.
• Network traffic: Measures the volume of data being transferred across network interfaces.

Collecting Metrics

Metrics in Azure are collected regularly and automatically, allowing you to keep a consistent eye on resource performance. There is an option to route some platform metrics to a Log Analytics workspace, where you can query them alongside other data sources for a detailed view. Use the Metrics Explorer within the Azure portal to conveniently access and review the collected data.

Analyzing Metrics

Azure Monitor offers robust tools to help users analyze metrics effectively:

• Metrics Explorer: A user-friendly feature for visualizing and analyzing metrics specifically for Azure resources.
• Log Analytics: Allows for detailed querying and analysis of log data using the Kusto Query Language (KQL).
• Dashboards: These offer a consolidated view of diverse data types within the Azure portal.
• Workbooks: Provide customizable report formats that can integrate text, metrics, and log queries.
• Grafana: An open-source tool ideal for operational dashboards.
• Power BI: Provides interactive visualizations that span various data sources.

Exporting Metrics

If further data analysis is required beyond what Azure Monitor provides natively, exporting metrics out of Azure Monitor is an option. Export methods include:

• REST API for metrics: Allows extraction of metric data from the Azure Monitor metrics database.
• Logs: With the REST API or associated client libraries.
• Log Analytics workspace data export: Facilitates exporting data for additional analysis or storage.

Alerts and Notifications

To proactively manage system health, Azure Monitor alerts are essential. They allow you to detect particular conditions in monitoring data promptly, so that any issues can be addressed before they become significant problems. Alerts can be configured on any metric or log data source within Azure Monitor's platform, ensuring comprehensive coverage and response capabilities.

Conclusion

Having a firm understanding of key metrics and their significance in Azure Monitor is critical for optimizing resource management and troubleshooting within Azure environments. By effectively collecting, analyzing, and exporting these metrics, you ensure the continued performance, availability, and health of your Azure resources. Properly leveraging these tools helps in forestalling potential issues and facilitates smooth operation of your systems in the cloud.