How to get instances count for VMSS in Application Insights? - azure

I have a Virtual Machine Scale Set (VMSS) with autoscaling rules. I can get the performance metrics of a host but there is no graph for instances count.
There is a graph on VMSS settings "Scaling" -> "Run history", like this.
But how I can get it from Metrics and place on the dashboard?

By default, having a VMSS does not emit anything to Application Insights (AI) unless you configure an app / platform (like Service Fabric for example) to use AI.
So, if you do have software running on the VMSS that emits to AI then you could write an AI analytics query to get the instance count like this:
requests
| summarize dcount(cloud_RoleInstance) by bin(timestamp, 1h)
Typically cloud_RoleInstance contains a VM identifier so that is what I used in the query. It does show the distinct count of VMs.
This only works reliable if the software runs on all VMs in the VMSS and if all VMs emit data to AI at least once an hour. Of course you can adapt the script to your liking / requirements.
operators used:
dcount: counts the unique occurences of the specified field
bin: group results in slots of 1 hour

Thanks Peter Bons, it's that I need!
As I run Docker on the VM I can add OMS agent container and use it's data.
This is what I wanted.
ContainerInventory
| where TimeGenerated >= ago(3h)
| where Name contains "frontend"
| summarize dcount(Computer) by bin(TimeGenerated, 5m)

On Azure portal, navigate to VMSS, select required VMSS -> Scaling under Settings from left-navigation-panel -> Click on 'Run History' tab on right-side-panel

The easy way is after you have gone to the 'Run History' tab just click the 'Pin to Dashboard' button. You can see this button in the image supplied in the question.

Related

Azure Heartbeat displaying status of all Virtual Machines with Color indicators

I am trying to write a query in Azure Monitor > Logs which displays the status of all virtual machines. I am currently able to display all VMs (in a selected scope) with their heartbeats but can't mention their status (with a green/red code) in the table.
My end goal is to display it on Azure Dashboard so that everyone in the team could look at the status of VMs.
I am pretty new to Azure and still trying to understand how it works. Any guidance will be appreciated.
My current simple heartbeat query is
Heartbeat
| summarize arg_max(TimeGenerated, *) by Computer
This display the following columns,
Computer
TimeGenerated
SourceComputerId
ComputerIP
Category
OSType
along with other details.
I tried to reproduce the same in my environment to create an Azure Dashboard for checking Status of Azure VM:
Go to Azure Portal > Virtual Machines > Click on pin- blade option > Create new.
Create a new dashboard, like below.
Note: If you select a shared option, whoever have RBAC access,they can be able to view the dashboard.
To change the dashboard view to Donut Chart.
Please follow the below steps.
Click on setting option> View >Summery.
Successfully created a dashboard with status.
Assign the RBAC role to user to view the dashboard.
Ex : Monitoring Reader

Kusto Query to get Http5xx by Instance level

I have Azure Function Apps running in App Service, and I am able to get the number of Http Server Errors by instance level in the Metrics (Pls see image). I would like to get the same level of metics via Kusto query and tried all the Log tables I can't find it. Is it possible to get those metrics by instance using Kusto?
I checked in AzureMetrics there is no instance level data stored: Here is the query I am using to get all Http Server Errors overall.
AzureMetrics
| where ResourceGroup == "RG"
| where TimeGenerated {TimeRange}
| where ResourceId in ("ResourceId")
| where MetricName == "Http5xx"
Since you are looking at Azure Metrics in metrics explorer, those generally are NOT coming from a kql backed data source (not all standard azure metrics are in any workspaces/etc for cost/compat reasons)
in workbooks, instead of using a Query step, you'd use a Metrics step to get this data instead. you'd pick that time range parameter in the time range dropdown, likewise you'd select the appropriate resource type and that resources or resource parameter in the resource picker of the metrics item, and you'd add that metric. (there's a preview feature coming to help with this, add ?feature.sendtoworkbooks=true to your azure portal url, like https://portal.azure.com/?feature.sendtoworkbooks=true) and the Metrics Explorer view will have additional "Send to workbooks" options in the share and pin menus that will convert the metrics view to a workbook)
If Application Insights is configured on this function app, you could possibly query the appinsights customMetrics table to get custom metrics in the function app, but probably not the standard metrics as KQL)

Azure App-Service alerts on auto-scaled instance count with condition

Context : app-service in Azure with enabled auto-scale 2 to 8 instances. Usually workload fluctuates between 2..4 instances, and only on rare occasions scaling maxes out to 8 instances - for such cases I want to set up an alert. Let's say, I am interested in all scaling operation above 4 instance count.
Problem : cannot find an alert "scope + condition signal" combination where instance count of auto-scale would be possible to select. Does such data is accessible at all?
And "no" - I do not want to use OOB "Scale out - Notify" functionality, because this feature sends out emails about all scaling operations. Since I am not interested 2..4 instances and only >4 instances, conditioning must be possible.
You can create the alert mechanism for the autoscale operation in web app by projecting the autoscale operation logs to log analytic workspace & followed by creating custom alert.
Here are the steps you need to follow:
Go to Scale-out (App service plan) option in the portal under that Navigate to Diagnostic settings.
Create Diagnostic settings for the autoscale operations & project those logs to log analytics workspace.
Based on the requirement shared above, use the below query to pull scale out operation of a web app with instance count is greater.
AutoscaleScaleActionsLog | where OperationName == 'InstanceScaleAction' and ResultType == "Succeeded"
| where NewInstanceCount >4 and ScaleDirection == 'Increase'
Use the New alert rule option in the log analytics space to create a custom alert & using the above query as signal as shown in below picture.
Here is the sample image of the alert rule that was created using the above query
The above alert query run for every thirty minutes , if there any autoscale operation got recorded it will trigger an email to mentioned recipients.
click on save , enable the alert rule
Here is the sample email output triggered by alert rule

Azure Free Space metric does not show any data

I have a log analytics workspace and 2 VMs connected to it. The VMs do not have Guest-OS enabled.
When I navigate to the Log Analytics --> Log blade and run the Azure provided query for "% Free Space" nothing shows up at all.
Do I need to enable Guest-OS for the VMs ? I thought this metric was out-of-the-box by Azure. What am I missing here ?
More observations:
VM1 and VM2 are connected to the log workspace. I enabled guest-os for VM2 ONLY thinking that this is needed. When I ran this Free Space query with log analytics workspace as the scope, I could see the data for VM1 also which was strange.
So I concluded that Guest-OS is not needed for this metric.
So I removed Guest-OS and removed WADPerformaceCounterTable from the storage too.
And now I dont see ANY data for the query
According to my test, if we want to monitor the servers available disk space using Azure Log Analytics, we need to have the Azure monitor agent installed on the VM’s you want to monitor and enable Performance counters in Azure log analysis.. For further details about it, please refer to the blog.
For example(I use windows VM for test)
Enable the Log Analytics VM Extension. For more details, please refer to here and here
Configuring Performance counters
Query
erf
| where ObjectName == "LogicalDisk" or // the object name used in Windows records
ObjectName == "Logical Disk" // the object name used in Linux records
| where CounterName == "Free Megabytes"
| summarize arg_max(TimeGenerated, *) by InstanceName // arg_max over TimeGenerated returns the latest record
| project TimeGenerated, InstanceName, CounterValue, Computer, _ResourceId

Alert for Azure Virtual Machine running for X hours?

I use an Azure VM for personal purposes and use it mostly like I would use a laptop for checking email etc. However, I have several times forgot to stop the VM when I am done using it and thus have had it run idle for days, if not weeks, resulting in unnecessarily high billing.
I want to set up an email (and if possible also SMS and push notification) alert.
I have looked at the alert function in the advisor, but it does not seem to have enough customization to handle such a specific alert (which would also reduce Microsoft's income!).
Do you know any relatively simple way to set up such an alert?
You can take use of Log Analytics workspaces and Custom log search.
The below are the steps to create an alert, which will send the alert if the azure vm is running exactly 1 hour.
First:
you need to create a Log Analytics workspaces and connect to azure vm as per this link.
Sencod:
1.In azure portal, nav to Azure Monitor -> Alerts -> New alert rule.
2.In the "Create rule" page, for Resource, select the Log Analytics workspaces you created ealier. Screenshot as below:
Then for Condition, please select Custom log search. Screenshot as below:
Then in the Configure signal logic page, in Search query, input the following query:
Heartbeat
| where Computer == "yangtestvm" //this is your azure vm name
| order by TimeGenerated desc
For Alert logic: set Based on as Number of results, set Operator as Equal to, set Threshold value as 60.
For Evaluated based on: set Period as 60, set Frequency as 5.
The screenshot as below:
Note:
for the above settings, I query the Heartbeat table. For azure vm which is running, it always sends data to log analytics to the Heartbeat table per minute. So if I want to check if the azure vm is running exactly 1 hour(means it sends 60 data to Heartbeat table), just use the above query, and set the Threshold value to 60.
Another thing is the Period, it also needs to be set as 1 hour(60 minutes) since I just check if the azure vm is running for 1 hour; for Frequecy, you can set it any value you like.
If you understand what I explains, you can change these values as per your need.
At last, set the other settings for this alert.
Please let me know if you still have more issues about this.
Another option is to use the Azure Activity log to determine if a VM has been running for more than a specified amount of time. The benefit to this approach is that you don't need to enable Diagnostic Logging (Log Analytics), it also supports appliances that can't have an agent installed (i.e. NVAs).
The logic behind this query is to determine if the VM is in a running state, and if so has it been running for more than a specified period of time (MaxUpTime).
This is achieved by getting the most recent event of type 'Start' or 'Deallocate', then checking if this event is of type 'Start' and was generated more than 'MaxUpTime' ago
let DaysOfLogsToCheck = ago(7days);
let MaxUptime = ago(2h); // If the VM has been up for this long we want to know about it
AzureActivity
| where TimeGenerated > DaysOfLogsToCheck
// ActivityStatus == "Succeeded" makes more sense, but in practice it can be out of order, so "Started" is better in the real world
| where OperationName in ("Deallocate Virtual Machine", "Start Virtual Machine") and ActivityStatus == "Started"
// We need to keep only the most recent entry of type 'Deallocate Virtual Machine' or 'Start Virtual Machine'
| top 1 by TimeGenerated desc
// Check if the most recent entry was "Start Virtual Machine" and is older than MaxUpTime
| where OperationName == "Start Virtual Machine" and TimeGenerated <= MaxUptime
| project TimeGenerated, Resource, OperationName, ActivityStatus, ResourceId

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