Msoms

Azure Log Analytics is a software-as-a-service offering from Microsoft that allows Enterprise IT to manage any hybrid cloud. It offers log analytics, automation, backup and recovery, and security and compliance. Sign up for a free subscription on Azure or read more about Azure Log Analytics.

Introduction

This chart deploys an OMS daemonset on a Kubernetes cluster using the Helm package manager. The OMS agent enables rich and real-time analytics for Docker containers. With this solution, you can see which containers are running on your container hosts and what images are running in the containers. You can view detailed audit information showing commands used with containers. And, you can troubleshoot containers by viewing and searching centralized logs without having to remotely view Docker or hosts. You can find containers that may be noisy and consuming excess resources on a host. And, you can view centralized CPU, memory, storage, and network usage and performance information for containers.

Prerequisites

• Kubernetes 1.6+
• Add the Container Monitoring solution to the Azure Log Analytics workspace.

Monitoring Azure applications and resources

Monitoring is the act of collecting and analyzing data to determine the performance, health, and availability of your business application and the resources that it depends on. An effective monitoring strategy helps you understand the detailed operation of the components of your application. It also helps you increase your uptime by proactively notifying you of critical issues so that you can resolve them before they become problems.

Azure includes multiple services that individually perform a specific role or task in the monitoring space. Together, these services deliver a comprehensive solution for collecting, analyzing, and acting on telemetry from your application and the Azure resources that support them. They can also work to monitor critical on-premises resources in order to provide a hybrid monitoring environment. Understanding the tools and data that are available is the first step in developing a complete monitoring strategy for your application.

The following diagram shows a conceptual view of the components that work together to provide monitoring of Azure resources.

Shared capabilities

The core and deep monitoring service share functionality which provides the following capabilities.

Alerts

Azure alerts proactively notify you of critical conditions and potentially take corrective action. Alert rules can use data from multiple sources, including metrics and logs. They use action groups, which contain unique sets of recipients and actions in response to an alert. Based on your requirements, you can have alerts start external actions by using webhooks and integrate with your ITSM tools.

Dashboards

You can use Azure dashboards to combine different kinds of data into a single pane in the Azure portal. You can then share the dashboard with other Azure users.

For example, you can create a dashboard that combines:

• Tiles that show a graph of metrics
• A table of activity logs
• A usage chart from Application Insights
• The output of a log search in Log Analytics

You can also export Log Analytics data to Power BI. There, you can take advantage of additional visualizations. You can also make the data available to others within and outside your organization.

Metrics Explorer

Metrics are numerical values generated by an Azure resource to help you understand the operation and performance of the resource. By using Metrics Explorer, you can send metrics to Log Analytics for analysis with data from other sources.

Core monitoring

Core monitoring provides fundamental, required monitoring across Azure resources. These services require minimal configuration and collect core telemetry that the premium monitoring services use.

Azure Monitor

Azure Monitor enables core monitoring for Azure services by allowing the collection of metrics, activity logs, and diagnostic logs. For example, the activity log tells you when new resources are created or modified.

Metrics are available that provide performance statistics for different resources and even the operating system inside a virtual machine. You can view this data with one of the explorers in the Azure portal and create alerts based on these metrics. Azure Monitor provides the fastest metrics pipeline (5 minutes down to 1 minute), so you should use it for time-critical alerts and notifications.

You can also send these metrics and logs Azure Log Analytics for trending and detailed analysis, or create additional alert rules to proactively notify you of critical issues as a result of that analysis.

Azure Advisor

Azure Advisor constantly monitors your resource configuration and using telemetry. It then gives you personalized recommendations based on best practices. Following these recommendations helps you improve the performance, security, and availability of the resources that support your applications.

Service Health

The health of your application relies on the Azure services that it depends on. Azure Service Health identifies any issues with Azure services that might affect your application. Service Health also helps you plan for scheduled maintenance.

Activity Log

Activity Log provides data about the operation of an Azure resource. This information includes:

• Configuration changes to the resource.
• Service health incidents.
• Recommendations on better utilizing the resource.
• Information related to autoscale operations.

You can view logs for a particular resource on its page in the Azure portal. Or you can view logs from multiple resources in Activity Log Explorer.

You can also send activity log entries to Log Analytics. There, you can analyze the logs by using data collected by management solutions, agents on virtual machines, and other sources.

Deep monitoring services

The following Azure services provide rich capabilities for collecting and analyzing monitoring data at a deeper level. These services build on core monitoring and take advantage of common functionality in Azure. They provide powerful analytics with collected data to give you unique insights into your applications and infrastructure. They present data in the context of scenarios that are targeted at different audiences.

Deep application monitoring

Application Insights

You can use Azure Application Insights to monitor availability, performance, and usage of your application, whether it’s hosted in the cloud or on-premises.

By instrumenting your application to work with Application Insights, you can achieve deep insights and implement DevOps scenarios. You can quickly identify and diagnose errors without waiting for a user to report them. With the information that you collect, you can make informed choices on your application’s maintenance and improvements.

Application Insights has extensive tools for interacting with the data that it collects. Application Insights stores its data in a common repository. It can take advantage of shared functions such as alerts, dashboards, and deep analysis with the Log Analytics query language.

Deep infrastructure monitoring

Log Analytics

Log Analytics plays a central role in Azure monitoring by collecting data from a variety of resources (including non-Microsoft tools) into a single repository. There, you can analyze the data by using a powerful query language.

Application Insights and Azure Security Center store their data in the Log Analytics data store and use its analytics engine. Data is also collected from Azure Monitor, management solutions, and agents installed on virtual machines in the cloud or on-premises. This shared functionality helps you form a complete picture of your environment.

Management solutions

Management solutions are packaged sets of logic that provide insights for a particular application or service. They rely on Log Analytics to store and analyze the monitoring data that they collect.

Management solutions are available from Microsoft and partners to provide monitoring for various Azure and third-party services. Examples of monitoring solutions include:

• Container Monitoring, which helps you view and manage your container hosts.
• Azure SQL Analytics, which collects and visualizes performance metrics for Azure SQL databases.
• You can view all available management solutions in the Azure Portal under the Monitor screen.

Network monitoring

There are several tools that work together to monitor various aspects of your network, whether in Azure or on-premises.

Network Watcher provides scenario-based monitoring and diagnostics for different network scenarios in Azure. It stores data in Azure metrics and diagnostics for further analysis. It works with the following solutions for monitoring various aspects of your network.

• Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is a cloud-based network monitoring solution that monitors connectivity across public clouds, data centers, and on-premises environments.
• ExpressRoute Monitor is an NPM capability that monitors the end-to-end connectivity and performance over Azure ExpressRoute circuits.
• DNS Analytics is a solution that provides security, performance, and operations-related insights, based on your DNS servers.
• Service Endpoint Monitor tests the reachability of applications and detects performance bottlenecks across on-premises, carrier networks, and cloud/private data centers.

Service Map

Service Map provides insight into your IaaS environment by analyzing virtual machines with their different processes and dependencies on other computers and external processes. It integrates events, performance data, and management solutions in Log Analytics. You can then view this data in the context of each computer and its relation to the rest of your environment.

Service Map is similar to Application Map in Application Insights. It focuses on the infrastructure components that support your applications.

The post Msoms appeared first on kubedex.com.