Introduction / Issue
In modern cloud environments, infrastructure reliability depends heavily on continuous monitoring. Virtual machines, storage accounts, databases, and network components must remain healthy to ensure uninterrupted application availability. However, without proper monitoring in place, infrastructure issues are often detected only after users report problems.
In one Azure environment, performance degradation and service interruptions were reported sporadically. Investigation revealed that resource utilization spikes and service failures were occurring, but no monitoring or alerting mechanism was configured to notify administrators proactively. This resulted in delayed incident response and increased operational risk.
To overcome this challenge, Azure Monitor and alerting were implemented to enable proactive incident detection and faster resolution.
Why We Need to Do This / Cause of the Issue
Cause
Initially, Azure resources were deployed without enabling monitoring and alert rules. As a result:
- Resource health status was not being tracked
- No performance metrics were collected
- Administrators had no visibility into real-time resource behavior
- Failures were detected only after service impact
Without centralized monitoring, it was difficult to identify trends, predict failures, or respond quickly to incidents.
Impact
Lack of monitoring created multiple operational challenges:
- Delayed detection of outages
- Longer incident resolution time
- Increased downtime risk
- No historical performance data for analysis
- Reactive instead of proactive support
In enterprise cloud operations, this can lead to service instability and breach of service-level commitments. Therefore, implementing a robust monitoring and alerting system became essential.
How Do We Solve
Azure provides a native monitoring solution called Azure Monitor, which collects metrics, logs, and resource health data. By integrating Azure Monitor with Log Analytics and Alert Rules, infrastructure teams can detect and respond to incidents proactively.
Step 1: Enable Azure Monitor for Resources
Azure Monitor automatically collects basic platform metrics for Azure resources such as:
- CPU utilization
- Memory usage
- Disk I/O
- Network throughput
- Resource health status
No additional installation is required for basic metrics. For deeper insights, Log Analytics is enabled.
Step 2: Create Log Analytics Workspace
A Log Analytics workspace acts as a centralized log repository.
Steps:
- Create a Log Analytics workspace in Azure Portal
- Connect virtual machines and other resources to the workspace
- Enable data collection for performance counters and system logs
This allows centralized visibility across the infrastructure.
Step 3: Configure Data Collection
For Linux and Windows VMs, enable:
- CPU and memory performance counters
- Disk utilization metrics
- Syslog or Windows event logs
Once enabled, Azure Monitor starts collecting real-time operational data.
Step 4: Create Alert Rules
Alert rules are configured to notify administrators when thresholds are exceeded.
Examples:
- CPU usage above 85% for 5 minutes
- Disk space below 15%
- VM not responding
- Network latency above defined limits
Alerts can trigger:
- Email notifications
- SMS messages
- Webhooks
- Automation runbooks for auto-remediation
Step 5: Configure Action Groups
Action Groups define who receives alerts and what automated action should occur. Multiple recipients and automation actions can be grouped together for efficient incident response.
Step 6: Monitor Dashboards
Azure Monitor dashboards provide real-time visualization of:
- Resource health
- Performance trends
- Active alerts
- Historical metrics
