Venture into the world of Azure Infrastructure, where design meets functionality. Harness your skills and gain mastery over complex cloud structures to ace the AZ-305 Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions exam!
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A large enterprise has deployed a critical, multi-tier application on Azure, comprising Azure Spring Apps microservices, Azure SQL Database, and several Azure Virtual Machines hosting legacy components. They are currently experiencing unexpectedly high data ingestion costs due to default monitoring configurations. The operations team requires a comprehensive monitoring solution that provides deep application performance insights, infrastructure health, and user behavior analytics, while significantly optimizing costs.
The design must fulfill the following specific requirements:
Which integrated monitoring solution design best meets these requirements?
Integrate third-party APM tools for Azure Spring Apps and Azure Virtual Machines, forwarding only critical alerts to Azure Event Hubs. Use Azure Resource Health for infrastructure status and Service Health for platform issues. Store all raw telemetry in Azure Storage Accounts for long-term retention and use a custom application to query and visualize data.
Use Azure Monitor Application Insights (classic) for Azure Spring Apps, relying on its default collection. Install the Log Analytics agent on Azure Virtual Machines to collect all performance counters and system logs. Configure Azure Security Center to generate alerts for all security-related events. Visualize all data using Power BI dashboards connected directly to Application Insights and Log Analytics.
Deploy Azure Monitor Log Analytics workspace for all telemetry, sending all application logs from Azure Spring Apps and all VM logs and performance counters directly to it. Use Activity Log Alerts for all critical incidents and create custom KQL queries for dashboard visualization in Log Analytics. Implement a daily data cap on the Log Analytics workspace to control costs.
Implement Azure Monitor Application Insights (workspace-based) for Azure Spring Apps with sampling enabled and unneeded modules disabled. Deploy the Azure Monitor Agent on Azure Virtual Machines with Data Collection Rules (DCRs) to filter unnecessary data and send performance counters to both Azure Monitor Metrics and Log Analytics. Configure Basic Logs for less critical log tables in Log Analytics. Utilize Azure Monitor Metric Alerts for high-frequency, critical infrastructure issues and Log Search Alerts for application-specific anomalies, optimizing their frequency. Consolidate all data for visualization in Azure Workbooks.
Integrate third-party APM tools for Azure Spring Apps and Azure Virtual Machines, forwarding only critical alerts to Azure Event Hubs. Use Azure Resource Health for infrastructure status and Service Health for platform issues. Store all raw telemetry in Azure Storage Accounts for long-term retention and use a custom application to query and visualize data.
Use Azure Monitor Application Insights (classic) for Azure Spring Apps, relying on its default collection. Install the Log Analytics agent on Azure Virtual Machines to collect all performance counters and system logs. Configure Azure Security Center to generate alerts for all security-related events. Visualize all data using Power BI dashboards connected directly to Application Insights and Log Analytics.
Deploy Azure Monitor Log Analytics workspace for all telemetry, sending all application logs from Azure Spring Apps and all VM logs and performance counters directly to it. Use Activity Log Alerts for all critical incidents and create custom KQL queries for dashboard visualization in Log Analytics. Implement a daily data cap on the Log Analytics workspace to control costs.
Implement Azure Monitor Application Insights (workspace-based) for Azure Spring Apps with sampling enabled and unneeded modules disabled. Deploy the Azure Monitor Agent on Azure Virtual Machines with Data Collection Rules (DCRs) to filter unnecessary data and send performance counters to both Azure Monitor Metrics and Log Analytics. Configure Basic Logs for less critical log tables in Log Analytics. Utilize Azure Monitor Metric Alerts for high-frequency, critical infrastructure issues and Log Search Alerts for application-specific anomalies, optimizing their frequency. Consolidate all data for visualization in Azure Workbooks.
This solution leverages a comprehensive suite of Azure Monitor services, configured with best practices for cost optimization and deep observability. It integrates Application Insights for application-level telemetry, the Azure Monitor Agent (AMA) for infrastructure monitoring, Log Analytics as a central data store, and Azure Monitor's alerting and visualization tools.
This design is optimal because it directly addresses all stated requirements, particularly the need for cost optimization without sacrificing comprehensive visibility. It leverages the strengths of each Azure Monitor component: Application Insights for deep application telemetry, AMA for efficient VM monitoring, Log Analytics for centralized storage and advanced querying, and Azure Monitor's native alerting and visualization tools. The specific recommendations like sampling, DCR filtering, and Basic Logs are direct responses to the high ingestion cost problem, making it a well-rounded and efficient integrated monitoring architecture.