What does Azure Monitor do

In this article, I will walk you through what does Azure Monitor do, etc.

Azure Monitor is a Microsoft tool for collecting and analyzing data from different Azure resources. It mainly provides information about how your application is performing or any issues that might affect its performance.

What does Azure Monitor do

You might wonder what exactly we can do with the Azure Monitor. Below are a few key usages.

• Find out different issues and diagnose them from different applications and dependencies with Application Insights.
• The Azure Monitor tool helps you analyze data more deeply and troubleshoot it using Log Analytics.
• It helps you to create visualizations with the Azure dashboards and workbooks.
• Azure Monitor also helps you relate the infrastructure issues to the Azure VMs.

Azure monitors your Azure Virtual machines and analyzes your Virtual machine performance and health condition.

Application insights help you monitor your web application’s availability, performance, usage, etc. Azure Monitor enables you to analyze your applications’ operations deeply and diagnose errors without waiting for users to report issues.

There is also a set of logic that provides insight for a specific application or Azure Service, termed a Monitoring solution in the case of Azure Monitor. They are responsible for collecting the monitoring data for the application or services and providing the queries for analysis.

Key Components of Azure Monitor

Azure Monitor isn’t a single service but rather a suite of integrated capabilities. Let’s break down the major components:

1. Data Collection

Azure Monitor collects data from various sources, including:

• Platform metrics – Automatically collected performance data from Azure services
• Guest OS metrics – Performance data from virtual machine operating systems
• Application data – Telemetry from your custom applications using Application Insights
• Azure resource logs – Detailed diagnostic and auditing information
• Azure Active Directory logs – User activity and sign-in information
• Custom sources – Data you define and collect through APIs

2. Data Analysis

Once data is collected, Azure Monitor provides multiple ways to analyze it:

• Metrics Explorer – Visual interface for analyzing performance metrics
• Log Analytics – Powerful query language for complex log analysis
• Workbooks – Customizable interactive reports
• Dashboards – Personalized views of your most important metrics

3. Response and Automation

The real power of monitoring comes from how you respond to issues:

• Alerts – Proactive notifications when metrics cross thresholds
• Autoscale – Dynamically adjust resources based on demand
• Integration with Azure Automation – Trigger runbooks to remediate issues
• Integration with third-party tools – Connect to your existing ITSM systems

Advanced Azure Monitor Capabilities

As your monitoring maturity increases, you can leverage these more sophisticated features:

Custom Dashboards

Azure Monitor provides built-in features for visualizing and analyzing collected data. Create custom dashboards that display your most critical metrics in one place:

1. Navigate to the Azure dashboard
2. Add metric charts, log queries, and other visualizations
3. Arrange them to highlight relationships between different data points
4. Share with your team for collaborative monitoring

Workbooks

Workbooks take dashboards a step further by allowing interactive reports:

1. Navigate to “Workbooks” in Azure Monitor
2. Start with a template or create a custom workbook
3. Add interactive controls like time range selectors
4. Combine metrics, logs, and text explanations in one view

Log Analytics Queries

The true power of Azure Monitor comes from its query capabilities:

// Sample query to find the top 10 resource-consuming VMs
Perf
| where CounterName == "% Processor Time"
| summarize AvgCPU = avg(CounterValue) by Computer
| top 10 by AvgCPU desc

Monitoring Different Azure Resources

Different Azure resources have unique monitoring requirements. Here’s how to approach some common scenarios:

Azure Virtual Machines

For VMs, you’ll want to monitor:

• CPU, memory, and disk utilization
• Network throughput and latency
• Operating system events and logs

Enable VM insights to get a comprehensive view of performance across your VM fleet.

Azure SQL Database

For database monitoring, focus on:

• Query performance and execution statistics
• Storage utilization and growth trends
• Connection counts and wait statistics

Use SQL Analytics to correlate performance issues with resource constraints.

Azure App Service

For web applications, monitor:

• Response times and request counts
• Error rates and exceptions
• Dependency performance (database calls, external APIs)

Application Insights provides end-to-end transaction monitoring for web applications.

You may also like the following articles below

• Azure Monitor vs Azure Advisor
• What Are Azure Monitoring Tools

Wrapping Up

In this Azure article, we discussed what is Azure monitor used for. Thanks for reading this article !!!

Rajkishore

I am Rajkishore, and I am a Microsoft Certified IT Consultant. I have over 14 years of experience in Microsoft Azure and AWS, with good experience in Azure Functions, Storage, Virtual Machines, Logic Apps, PowerShell Commands, CLI Commands, Machine Learning, AI, Azure Cognitive Services, DevOps, etc. Not only that, I do have good real-time experience in designing and developing cloud-native data integrations on Azure or AWS, etc. I hope you will learn from these practical Azure tutorials. Read more.