Azure Monitor
Definition
Azure Monitor is a service for collecting and analyzing telemetry data from cloud and on-premises environments, providing insights for performance.
Use Cases
- Microsoft: Monitor the health and performance of Azure-hosted applications and services, including detecting outages and performance regressions. — Uses Azure Monitor across Azure resources, with metrics and alerts for infrastructure signals and log-based queries in Log Analytics for deeper troubleshooting; integrates alert routing with incident response workflows. (Faster detection and investigation of service issues and more consistent operational visibility across large-scale Azure environments.)
- ASOS: Improve reliability and performance monitoring for customer-facing e-commerce workloads running on Azure. — Uses Azure monitoring capabilities (Azure Monitor with application and infrastructure telemetry) to track performance indicators, set alert thresholds, and investigate incidents using centralized telemetry. (Better operational visibility and quicker troubleshooting during incidents, supporting improved site reliability during peak traffic.)
Provider Equivalents
- AWS: Amazon CloudWatch
- Azure: Azure Monitor
- GCP: Google Cloud Observability (Cloud Monitoring and Cloud Logging)
- OCI: OCI Monitoring (with OCI Logging and OCI Logging Analytics for logs)
Frequently Asked Questions
- What's the difference between Azure Monitor and Application Insights?
- Azure Monitor is the overall platform for collecting and analyzing telemetry (metrics, logs, and traces) across Azure resources and some on-premises sources. Application Insights is a feature within Azure Monitor focused on application performance monitoring (APM), such as request rates, response times, failures, dependencies, and distributed tracing for apps.
- When should I use Azure Monitor?
- Use Azure Monitor when you need a single place to watch the health of Azure resources (VMs, databases, Kubernetes, networking), collect logs for troubleshooting and auditing, build dashboards, and create alerts for incidents. It’s especially useful when you want proactive alerting (before users report problems) and centralized visibility across multiple subscriptions or environments.
- How much does Azure Monitor cost?
- Azure Monitor pricing depends on what you collect and how long you keep it. Platform metrics for many Azure resources are available at no additional cost, but log ingestion and retention in Log Analytics are typically billed based on data volume and retention period. Additional costs can apply for features like long-term archiving, certain alert types, and exporting data. Always estimate using your expected GB/day of logs and retention requirements.
Category: monitoring
Difficulty: intermediate
Related Terms
See Also