AZ-104 Microsoft Azure Administrator Exam

Define and Implement Alert Rules

Alert Rules Overview

Alert rules in Azure Monitor are crucial for proactive monitoring and providing automated responses when resource conditions change. They help in maintaining the health and performance of resources by notifying administrators of critical conditions. By defining clear criteria for alerts, these rules can also specify what actions should be taken when certain conditions are met. This ensures that you can respond promptly to potential issues before they escalate.

Recommended Alerts

Recommended alerts enable users to quickly establish a set of predetermined alert rules for specific Azure resources. By navigating to the Alerts tab in the Azure portal, administrators can select Set up recommendations to enable a collection of predefined rules. While this is not available for every service, it offers useful guidance on which specific alert rules should be created for various types of resources. Furthermore, Azure Policy can be used to automate the creation of these alert rules across all resources of a specified type.

Azure Monitor Baseline Alerts (AMBA)

AMBA is a valuable repository combining insights from both product teams and field experiences to boost visibility into alert definitions. Its extensive library includes metric and log alert definitions covering areas like:

• Service Health
• Compute resources
• Networking resources

AMBA is designed to facilitate consistent and scalable detection and management of issues. It includes example snippets that help in deploying alerts via ARM or BICEP deployments along with policy definitions, thus enhancing observability.

Manual Alert Rules

For more unique requirements, users have the option to manually create alert rules for any Azure resource based on specific metric values or log queries. While creating manual alerts involves setting up and managing each rule individually, it is exceptionally suited for cases where special attention is required. Azure service documentation offers recommendations on what telemetry to collect and which alert rules are beneficial to implement.

Azure Policy Automation

Azure Policy plays an important role by enabling automatic creation of alert rules across specific resource types. This function applies equally to existing as well as newly added resources. By establishing alert conditions in advance, the policy automatically triggers the creation of corresponding alert rules for each resource. This not only minimizes manual intervention but also ensures comprehensive coverage.

Action Groups and Alert Processing Rules

Action groups are designed to define how notifications should be managed and who should receive them when alerts trigger. Sending notifications can take various forms such as email, SMS, push notifications, or even voice messages. Actions as part of this process might involve:

• Automation Runbooks to automate recurring tasks triggered by alerts.
• Azure Functions to execute custom serverless code that is event-driven.
• ITSM Integration with providers like ServiceNow to facilitate ticket creation.
• Logic Apps for orchestrating more complex workflows.
• Webhooks to trigger processes in third-party services or internal systems.

Conclusion

Establishing alert rules, action groups, and processing rules within Azure Monitor creates an environment where proactive monitoring and automated responses become standard practice. It fortifies resource health and performance by timely notifying administrators about critical alerts and even enabling automated corrective measures. Overall, this integrated system allows organizations to maintain robust operational stability while minimizing risks associated with unexpected disruptions.