Azure Monitor Insights provides a curated, pre-configured monitoring experience for specific Azure resources, significantly simplifying the operational workload for an Azure Administrator. Instead of manually building queries and dashboards from raw logs and metrics, Insights offers out-of-the-box …Azure Monitor Insights provides a curated, pre-configured monitoring experience for specific Azure resources, significantly simplifying the operational workload for an Azure Administrator. Instead of manually building queries and dashboards from raw logs and metrics, Insights offers out-of-the-box visualizations and health logic.
VM Insights (Azure Monitor for VMs) monitors the performance and health of virtual machines and scale sets. It relies on the Azure Monitor Agent to collect data. Its standout feature is the 'Map' view, which visualizes dependencies between servers, processes, and external services, aiding in root cause analysis. It also provides a 'Performance' view to track CPU, memory, disk, and network trends, helping to identify bottlenecks immediately.
Storage Insights provides a unified view of your Azure Storage accounts performance, capacity, and availability. It aggregates data across Blob, File, Queue, and Table services. Administrators can use this to quickly detect transaction latency, spot throttling issues, or analyze capacity growth without complex configuration.
Network Insights acts as a centralized console for network health. It visualizes the topology of your entire network, including Load Balancers, Application Gateways, and ExpressRoute circuits. By integrating with Network Watcher, it helps administrators understand resource connectivity, identify broken links, and verify that network traffic flows as intended through Network Security Groups (NSGs).
In summary, these Insights reduce the Time to Detect (TTD) and Time to Resolve (TTR) issues by transforming raw telemetry data into actionable, visual intelligence specific to the resource type.
A Comprehensive Guide to Azure Monitor Insights (VMs, Storage, Networks)
What is Azure Monitor Insights?
Azure Monitor Insights provides a curated, pre-built monitoring experience for specific Azure resources. While Azure Monitor collects metrics and logs from all resources, analyzing raw data can be time-consuming. Insights packages this data into interactive, customized views, logic, and visualizations that differ based on the resource type. It bridges the gap between raw telemetry and actionable intelligence.
Why is it Important?
In complex cloud environments, simply knowing CPU usage is often insufficient. You need to understand relationships, dependencies, and end-to-end transaction flows. Insights are critical because they: 1. Reduce MTTR (Mean Time To Recovery): By visualizing dependencies (e.g., often proving that a VM issue is actually a network connection issue). 2. Provide Context: They correlate metrics with logs automatically. 3. Zero Configuration: Many Insights (like Storage and Network) require little to no configuration compared to building custom Dashboards.
How it Works: The Three Pillars
1. VM Insights (Azure Monitor for VMs) This is one of the most heavily tested areas. It monitors your Azure virtual machines (VMs) and Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS) at scale. It requires the installation of agents (typically the Azure Monitor Agent and the Dependency Agent). Key Features: • Performance: Aggregates metrics like CPU, Memory, Disk, and Network usage into health trends. • Map: The most distinct feature. It creates a visual map showing running processes on the VM, inbound/outbound connection ports, and dependencies on other servers or external IPs.
2. Storage Insights Provides a unified view of your Azure Storage accounts’ performance, capacity, and availability. Key Features: • Capacity: Tracks storage used over time. • Transaction Latency: Identifying slow requests. • Availability: highlighting server-side or client-side errors (throttling).
3. Network Insights Provides a centralized view of health and metrics for all network resources. Key Features: • Topology: Visualizes the relationship between VNets, Subnets, VMs, and Load Balancers. • Health Monitors: Shows the functional state of Load Balancers, Application Gateways, and ExpressRoute circuits. • Connectivity: Integrates with Connection Monitor to show packet loss and latency.
The AZ-104 exam focuses on scenarios where you must select the correct tool. Use these rules to answer correctly:
• Keyword "Dependencies": If a question asks to "visualize dependencies," "see which ports are open," or "identify which external IP a process is talking to," the answer is almost always VM Insights (specifically the Map feature).
• Keyword "Topology": If a question asks to view the infrastructure layout or how resources connect at a network level, choose Network Insights. Do not confuse this with Network Watcher (which is for deep packet inspection/troubleshooting specific flows), though Network Insights visualizes the data.
• Keyword "Agents": Remember that VM Insights is not automatic; it requires an agent (Azure Monitor Agent/Dependency Agent). Storage and Network insights generally work with platform metrics automatically.
• Keyword "Curated": If a scenario asks for a "pre-built" or "curated" view of performance without creating custom KQL queries, select Insights over generic "Metrics" or "Logs."
• Troubleshooting Performance: If asked to analyze why a disk is full or why transactions are slow on a blob container, look for Storage Insights as the primary investigation tool.