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Monitoring and Alerting

Azure Monitor provides visibility into the performance, health, and availability of Virtual Machines. It collects metrics and logs from the platform host and the guest operating system.

Monitoring Architecture

graph TD
    A[Azure VM] --> B[Host Platform Metrics]
    A --> C[Azure Monitor Agent]
    B --> D[Azure Monitor Metrics]
    C --> E[Log Analytics Workspace]
    D --> F[Alert Rules]
    E --> F
    F --> G[Action Groups]
    G --> H[Email/SMS/Webhooks]

Metric Types and Sources

Collection methods vary based on the depth of visibility required for the workload.

Metric Type Source Example Metrics Collection Method
Platform Metrics Azure Host CPU Percentage, Disk IOPS Default (Host level)
Guest Metrics Azure Monitor Agent (AMA) Memory used, Disk free space Azure Monitor Agent
Log Analytics OS Logs Event Viewer, Syslog Log Analytics Workspace

Alert Configuration

Alerts proactively notify you when metric thresholds are met or specific events occur.

Note

Metric alerts are near-real-time and cost less than log-search alerts.

Warning

Action Groups are shared resources. Modifying an action group affects all alerts that use it.

Tip

Enable VM insights to collect guest metrics and logs via Azure Monitor Agent.

See Also

Sources