Monitor and analyze metrics, logs, and traces

As a developer working with Microsoft Azure, it is crucial to monitor and analyze metrics, logs, and traces related to your solutions. This allows you to gain insights into the performance and behavior of your applications, diagnose issues, and optimize your Azure resources effectively. In this article, we will explore how you can monitor and analyze metrics, logs, and traces specifically for the exam Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure.

Azure Monitor: The Central Monitoring Service

Azure Monitor is the central monitoring service provided by Microsoft Azure. It enables you to collect and analyze data from various sources, including metrics, logs, and traces. Let’s delve into each of these aspects and understand how they can help you monitor and analyze your solutions.

1. Monitoring Metrics

Metrics in Azure Monitor provide numerical values that measure different aspects of your Azure resources. You can use metrics to understand the health, performance, and utilization of your Azure services. For example, you can monitor metrics such as CPU utilization, memory usage, request latency, and so on.

To monitor metrics, you can make use of the Azure Monitor Metrics Explorer. It allows you to explore and visualize metrics for different Azure resources and create custom charts. You can filter metrics based on resource type, resource group, and specific resources. Additionally, you can set up alerts based on defined thresholds to get notified when a metric breaches a certain limit.

Here’s an example code snippet to demonstrate how you can use the Azure Monitor Metrics Explorer:

2. Logging and Log Analytics

Logs contain detailed records of events and actions that occur within your Azure resources. Azure Monitor offers a feature called Azure Monitor Logs, which allows you to collect and analyze logs from various Azure services. You can use logs to gain insights into the behavior of your applications, detect issues, and perform troubleshooting.

Azure Monitor Logs leverages a query language called KQL (Kusto Query Language) to query and analyze log data. With KQL, you can filter, aggregate, and visualize log data to identify patterns and trends. You can create custom queries, create dashboards, and set up alerts based on specific log events.

Here’s an example code snippet that showcases how you can use Azure Monitor Logs:

3. Distributed Tracing

Distributed tracing is a technique that allows you to trace requests as they flow through different components of your application. It helps you understand the dependencies and performance of each component involved in processing a request. Azure Monitor integrates with Azure Application Insights, which provides distributed tracing capabilities.

Azure Application Insights automatically instruments your application code to collect distributed traces. By analyzing these traces, you can identify bottlenecks, latency issues, and failures in your application. You can also trace dependencies on external services and APIs to determine their impact on your application’s performance.

Here’s an example code snippet to demonstrate how you can use distributed tracing with Azure Application Insights:

In conclusion, monitoring and analyzing metrics, logs, and traces play a vital role in ensuring the optimal performance and reliability of your solutions on Azure. Azure Monitor, including Metrics Explorer, Azure Monitor Logs, and distributed tracing with Azure Application Insights, provides a comprehensive set of tools to monitor, analyze, and troubleshoot your Azure resources effectively. By leveraging these capabilities, you can proactively identify and resolve issues, optimize resource utilization, and deliver a seamless user experience.