What is the use case for Azure application insights or log analytics?
I am using APIM and Azure Functions and want to perform logging for requests. Which one is the best fit, application insights or log analytics?
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/azure-monitor/overview
Update
In particular, any info on Azure application insights vs log analytics used for APIM?
What used to be known as Application Insights and Log Analytics independent offerings - are now a part of Azure Monitor. We're actively merging both platforms.
For instance, Analytics exploration part is exactly the same (same backend, same UX, same capabilities, just different data schema). Alerts are the same. Some experiences are still different (for instance, app experiences such as Application Map).
Example: in Azure Monitor Overview (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/azure-monitor/overview):
"Log Analytics" is referred as a feature and not what used to be known as Log Analytics as a product. For instance, Application Insights resources provide the same "Log Analytics" feature.
For Azure Functions / APIM the native integration with Azure Monitor is through Application Insights.
Update (October, 2020). Application Insights can now store data in Log Analytics workspaces. Now many workspace related features are available to Application Insights resources. How to migrate.
Azure function better to go with application insights and if you working with kubernetes cluster choose Log analytics work space
Azure Functions offers built-in integration with Azure Application Insights to monitor functions.
So for azure function, you'd better use application insights, which is easy configure.
Details are here.
Application Insights
Application Insights is an Application Performance Management (APM) service, that you use to monitor your application. It helps to detect performance anomalies, has analytic abilities, and can help you understand how users interact with your application.
Not only can it collect telemetry data from your application, but it can also collect information from the application host, Azure Diagnostics, or Docker logs. It’s also nice that you can use Application Insights to set up tests that send requests to your website/service to check for availability (and receive a notice if these fail).
One of the most powerful things that I’ve noticed in my use of Application Insights (which is monitoring this blog), is the Smart Detection feature. This feature proactively analyzes and detects changes in your application. So even if you hadn’t set up an Alert of monitoring of a specific metric, it can pick it up and react to it.
Related
Im new to Azure. I have an App service that has Application Insight enabled. Im trying now to understand what Diagnotics Settings is and what it can be used for.
It seems like most of what Diagnotics Settings does can be done through Application Insights.
Is this correct or am I misunderstanding the purpose behind Diagnotics Settings?
There are some (major) differences. From the docs:
Platform logs in Azure, including the Azure Activity log and resource logs, provide detailed diagnostic and auditing information for Azure resources and the Azure platform they depend on. Platform metrics are collected by default and typically stored in the Azure Monitor metrics database.
Now, when we are talking about auditing information and activity logs, that is something that Application Insights (AI) cannot do. Also, AI is geared towards applications whereas Diagnostics Settings is used to emit information about azure platform resources. AI allows you to send custom telemetry and also can track a lot more detailed information.
I assume you ask this question in the context of an Azure Web App or Azure Function. I'd recommend to enable both. AI has a lot more to offer than Diagnostics Settings when it comes to detailed information about how your application is behaving.
Would like to use Application insights especially, "Azure live metrics stream" feature on existing PROD Azure service fabric workloads to do performance analysis.Is service fabric has built-in integration with Azure Application Insights?
Is it possible do it in code less manner like how Application insights can be enabled via portal for web Apps/Azure functions? If not, why?
Then, how to do it code based manner? Any reference to do code changes would be helpful.
What is the difference between code less & code based monitoring? When to choose one over another? Our requirement is to study performance of application (deployed on various nodes of PROD service fabric cluster) under different load.
Please clarify above list of queries.
Is service fabric has built-in integration with Azure Application Insights?
You could leverage Windows Azure Diagnostics (WAD) extension to sink SF cluster logs and/or Perf metrics into App Insights - Configuring Application Insights with WAD
There is no way to monitor an application running in SF via AppInsights without a small amount of coding.
Then, how to do it code based manner? Any reference to do code changes would be helpful.
Here you go - Monitor and diagnose an ASP.NET Core application on Service Fabric using Application Insights.
What is the difference between code less & code based monitoring? When to choose one over another? Our requirement is to study performance of application (deployed on various nodes of PROD service fabric cluster) under different load.
As I said, to monitor your app you have to code. Although it's super simple. Other from that, here is a general recommendation - Event analysis and visualization with Application Insights:
It is recommended to use EventFlow and WAD as aggregation solutions,
because they allow for a more modular approach to diagnostics and
monitoring, i.e. if you want to change your outputs from EventFlow, it
requires no change to your actual instrumentation, just a simple
modification to your config file. If, however, you decide to invest in
using Application Insights and are not likely to change to a different
platform, you should look into using Application Insights' new SDK for
aggregating events and sending them to Application Insights. This
means that you will no longer have to configure EventFlow to send your
data to Application Insights, but instead will install the
ApplicationInsight's Service Fabric NuGet package.
Here is the link to the best practices - Monitoring and diagnostics on SF platform.
If we deploy a Microservice in azure AKS, there may be multiple pods and replica of same services. If Microservice want to keep any custom log information about it's flow or errors , where better to store such logs centrally? Any PaaS services? e. g. Azure Storage? Any real experience to share here?
I would suggest Azure Application Insigths. You can enrich your telemetry with aks details using this integration package:
... when using Microsoft Application Insights for Kubernetes, you will see Kubernetes related properties like Pod-Name, Deployment ... on all your telemetry entries. Proper values will also be set to make use of the rich features like enabling the Application Map to show the multiple micro services on the same map.
For logging within your application you can use the ILogger interface (if using .net) and pipe it to app insights.
Or you can write your own logging using the sdk, available in selected languages.
For java applications, you can pipe your logs as well. You probably have to manually add pod details to your telemetry using telemetry initializers as the Microsoft Application Insights for Kubernetes package is .Net only. As far as I know they use the kubernetes rest api to query for details.
I am trying to load the logs from Application Insights to OMS in Microsoft Azure. The issue is arising when I am trying to get this data using Application Insights connector and the OMS portal shows me Performing Assessment continuously. Is it normal it already 1 day since this is shown? And Its a demo application which have very less logs.
The root cause maybe due to the Application Insights connector management solution is no longer required and will be deprecated. Starting July, you will not be able to link new Application Insights resources to Log Analytics workspaces.
Please refer to here.
And OMS is moving to Azure, you can use the new portal as described here.
I am hoping I can put in some simple API calls in legacy systems so I can capture point-in-time metrics "somewhere" in Azure, so that I can then take advantage of the Azure Portal dashboard and metrics graphing. I looked into Insights SDK but that seems to require that whatever I'm running be deployed somewhere in Azure cloud. I just want to run a simple powershell script or simple .net console app that connects to a legacy database in our internal network, pulls very basic point-in-time counts for message processing backlog... and then pushes that info with a timestamp out "somewhere" for visualization.
Any ideas what I can use for this in Azure?
Thanks,
Andres
You can use the TrackMetric API in Application Insights SDK.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/application-insights/app-insights-api-custom-events-metrics