Tutorial / Cram Notes
As an Azure Administrator preparing for the AZ-104 exam, understanding how to query and analyze logs is key to managing operational aspects of your deployed services effectively.
Azure Monitor is a comprehensive solution for collecting, analyzing, and acting on telemetry from your cloud and on-premises environments. It helps you understand how your applications are performing and proactively identifies issues affecting them and the resources they depend on.
Query Logs
Azure Monitor Logs is a feature within Azure Monitor that collects and organizes log and performance data from monitored resources. Data collected by Azure Monitor Logs is stored in a Log Analytics workspace and is a primary source for querying and analyzing log data.
Log Analytics
To query logs, you must use the Kusto Query Language (KQL), which is a powerful tool used in Azure to retrieve and analyze data from a Log Analytics workspace. KQL is similar to SQL but is designed specifically for querying large volumes of data in an ad-hoc way.
Example KQL Query
To retrieve information on all the error-level logs for a particular resource within the last 24 hours, you can use the following query:
AzureDiagnostics
| where TimeGenerated > ago(24h)
| where Level == “Error”
| project TimeGenerated, ResourceId, OperationName, Message
| sort by TimeGenerated desc
Analyze Logs
Analyzing logs is invaluable for troubleshooting issues, performing root cause analysis, and optimizing performance.
Azure Monitor Insights
Azure Monitor Insights provides a customized monitoring experience for various Azure services. Insights offers a preconfigured set of visualizations and queries that understand the schema of the specific monitored data and how to combine and present it.
Example: Virtual Machines Insights
For example, with Virtual Machine Insights, you can quickly identify performance bottlenecks, such as high CPU usage, by using out-of-the-box charts and querying capabilities.
Perf
| where ObjectName == “Processor” and CounterName == “% Processor Time”
| summarize avg(CounterValue) by bin(TimeGenerated, 5m), Computer
| render timechart
This query would generate a time chart depicting the average CPU usage over time.
Monitoring Solutions
Azure Monitor provides several solutions that extend its capabilities. These solutions include pre-packed KQL queries, visualizations, and dashboards for specific tasks like monitoring network performance, updates, or security.
Alerts
You can create alerts based on the metrics or logs. These alerts will notify you or trigger automated actions when specific criteria are met.
Example Alert Rule
An alert rule to notify when a virtual machine experiences high CPU utilization:
- Metric or Log to Alert On: Processor Time (Performance Counter)
- Condition: Greater than 90% over the last 5 minutes
- Action Group: Email alert to the administrator
Azure Service Health
Azure Service Health is a suite of experiences within Azure Monitor that provides personalized information about the health of your Azure services. Combining Azure Service Health with Azure Monitor Logs allows you to correlate health events with logged telemetry data.
Compliance and Security
Azure Monitor also integrates with Azure Security Center and Azure Policy to assist in compliance and security efforts. By analyzing logs with the context of your policy assignments and security posture, you can take proactive steps to secure your Azure environment.
When preparing for the AZ-104 Microsoft Azure Administrator exam, familiarize yourself with the tools and practices surrounding log analysis within Azure. Focus on understanding the KQL, how to set up monitoring solutions, create actionable insights with alerts, and comply with security and governance best practices. These skills will be invaluable for not only the exam but also your role as an Azure Administrator.
Practice Test with Explanation
True or False: It is possible to use Kusto Query Language (KQL) to write complex queries in Azure Log Analytics.
- True
Correct Answer: True
Explanation: KQL is the language used to query Azure Log Analytics data and can be used to write both simple and complex log queries.
In Azure Monitor, you can perform log queries to analyze data from which sources? (Select all that apply.)
- A) Virtual Machine metrics
- B) Azure Activity Log
- C) Application Insights
- D) Blob Storage logs
Correct Answer: A, B, C
Explanation: You can use Azure Monitor to perform log queries on data from Virtual Machine metrics, Azure Activity Log, and Application Insights. Blob storage logs are not directly queried using Azure Monitor, but you can store them in Azure Monitor Logs if you have set up the configuration to do so.
Which Azure service is primarily used to aggregate system and application logs across multiple Azure resources?
- A) Azure Monitor
- B) Azure Policy
- C) Azure Service Health
- D) Azure Automation
Correct Answer: A
Explanation: Azure Monitor is the service that collects, analyzes, and acts on telemetry data from Azure and on-premises environments, helping to understand system and application performance and operation.
True or False: Azure Log Analytics is a feature of Azure Monitor.
- True
Correct Answer: True
Explanation: Azure Log Analytics is a feature within Azure Monitor that helps you to collect and analyze logs from multiple sources.
What is the default retention period for data in Azure Monitor Logs?
- A) 7 days
- B) 30 days
- C) 90 days
- D) 365 days
Correct Answer: B
Explanation: The default retention period for Azure Monitor Logs is 31 days, but you can adjust it based on your requirements.
Azure Monitor uses which feature to provide visualizations for log data?
- A) Log Analytics
- B) Azure Dashboards
- C) Azure Time Series Insights
- D) Workbooks
Correct Answer: D
Explanation: Azure Monitor uses Workbooks to provide rich visualizations for log data, alongside the ability to create interactive reports and complex custom visualizations.
Which of the following can be used in Azure to create alerts based on log data? (Select all that apply.)
- A) Azure Monitor
- B) Azure Logic Apps
- C) Azure Service Health
- D) Azure Automation
Correct Answer: A, B, D
Explanation: Azure Monitor, Azure Logic Apps, and Azure Automation can be used to create alerts based on log data. Azure Monitor directly provides alerting on metrics and logs, Azure Logic Apps can be triggered by an alert to perform an action, and Azure Automation can run a runbook in response to an alert.
True or False: Azure Log Analytics requires an agent to collect data from on-premises servers.
- True
Correct Answer: True
Explanation: An agent, known as the Microsoft Monitoring Agent (MMA), is needed to be installed on on-premises servers to collect data for Azure Log Analytics.
Which of the following is not a use case for Azure Log Analytics?
- A) Real-time performance monitoring
- B) Troubleshooting application issues
- C) Predicting future trends with machine learning
- D) Enforcing Azure subscription policies
Correct Answer: D
Explanation: Azure Log Analytics is used for monitoring, troubleshooting, and analyzing data from a variety of sources including real-time performance data. It is not used for enforcing Azure subscription policies, which is a function of Azure Policy.
True or False: You can export the results of a log query to a Power BI dataset for further analysis.
- True
Correct Answer: True
Explanation: Azure Monitor allows you to export the results of log queries to Power BI datasets for further analysis and visualization in the Power BI service.
In what format does Azure Monitor store log data?
- A) SQL databases
- B) NoSQL databases
- C) Log files
- D) Table storage
Correct Answer: D
Explanation: Azure Monitor stores log data in a specialized table storage format optimized for cost and performance of log data.
True or False: You can use Azure Automation runbooks to automate responses to log alerts.
- True
Correct Answer: True
Explanation: Azure Automation runbooks can be used to create automated workflows that respond to log alerts triggered in Azure Monitor.
How crucial is it to understand log analytics for the AZ-104 exam?
Can someone explain the difference between Azure Monitor and Log Analytics?
Thank you for this great blog post on querying and analyzing logs!
Is KQL knowledge mandatory for passing the AZ-104 exam?
Really disappointed with the coverage of logging in this post. Expected more depth.
What’s the best way to practice log queries for the AZ-104 exam?
Anyone encountered issues with Log Analytics workspace configuration?
How do I efficiently query multiple log sources in Azure?