Get real insights about your Windows and Linux VMs & VMSSs performance and their dependencies with Azure Monitor. Integrate with Log Analytics for even more in depth analysis and retain the data over time. Health, Performance & Service Map of your VM in a dashboard.
Deploy to Single VM
For a single VM, go to the VMs blade, scroll down to the “Monitoring” section, select “Insights” and press “Try now”
The Azure Monitor Insights Onboarding wizard will open. If your VM is already onboard at a Log Analytics workspace just click Enable. Otherwize select a Log Analytics workspace or create one.
You will start seeing data form the VM in about 20-30 minutes.
Deploy to multiple VMs using Azure Policy
For deploying to multiple VMs, the easiest way is to use Azure Policy
Go to the Azure Policy, select Assignments and press “Assign initiative”
The first option is the Scope. Press the three dots “…” at the Scope field. You can choose a a Management Group, a Subscription or a Resource Group. So if you just select a Management Group (And don’t select subscription and resource group), this policy will apply to all Subscriptions under the Management Group and of course to all resources of the subscription. If you choose a Subscription (and don’t select a resource group then the policy will apply to all resources of the subscription. Finally if you choose a resource group then the policy will apply only to this resource group. Later we will see how to select specific VMs in the Subscription or Resource group.
After selecting the Scope you can add exclusions. There you can check the VMs you don’t want this policy to apply.
The next step is to select the Policy. At the BASICS section, press the three dots “…” near the “Initiative definition” and find the “Enable Azure Monitor for VMs”
Next step is to configure the Parameters. There select the Log Analytics workspace that the VM will onboard, or create a new one. Optionally you can provide a list of VMs instead of adding all of them
Finally press Apply. Back at the Azure Policy main menu you will see the new Definition Assignment.
View the Health / Performance / Service Map of the VMs
To view the Azure Monitor of the VMs, go to the VM that you have enabled Insights, select the Insights blade and you will be able to see the health status not only for the common CPU. Memory, Disk,
But also for the services that run inside the VM and the Azure Monitor discovered.
By clicking on any service you will have a list of all logs of this service
At the performance section you have the ability to select time range and have performance analytics for a requisted period of time
Finally at the MAp, you have a service map of the services and ports that are open and listening
Product Documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/insights/vminsights-overview
Pantelis Apostolidis is a Sr. Specialist, Azure at Microsoft and a former Microsoft Azure MVP. For the last 20 years, Pantelis has been involved to major cloud projects in Greece and abroad, helping companies to adopt and deploy cloud technologies, driving business value. He is entitled to a lot of Microsoft Expert Certifications, demonstrating his proven experience in delivering high quality solutions. He is an author, blogger and he is acting as a spokesperson for conferences, workshops and webinars. He is also an active member of several communities as a moderator in azureheads.gr and autoexec.gr. Follow him on Twitter @papostolidis.
