Can the windows diagnostic do the same as the OMS extension in terms of getting performance counter information and event details? Is there a reason to use the OMS extension over WAD for event/performance information?
Can the windows diagnostic do the same as the OMS extension in terms
of getting performance counter information and event details?
WAD: This uses Azure Diagnostics agent for single VM.
OMS: When you use OMS to monitor your VM or multiple Vs, The OMS collect data from Microsoft Monitoring Agent by default. However, OMS can collect data from managed resources into a central repository. This data could include events, performance data, or custom data provided through the API. So, OMS can also use the WAD's data through the storage account which contains the agent's data.
So, OMS has more features than WAD. Also as #4c74356b41 said, if you want to monitor one VM, WAD is enough to achieve that.
Is there a reason to use the OMS extension over WAD for
event/performance information?
OMS focus on collecting data from different place and Log Analytics.
It can collect data from Windows/Linux VMs, Azure services and Data Collector API.
Reporting and analyzing data is the most important feature of OMS. Alerting can also be configured in OMS.
Azure Automation provides process automation and configuration management to OMS.
Over all, if you want to do Analytics from multiple service, OMS is the best choice. If you only want to monitor a single VM rather doing other things, WAD is enough.
if you are looking at performance from one vm - no.
but there is a chance you have more than one vm oms extension suddenly gets more interesting, as you can look at all of the vms at the same time, setup alerts, actions etc.
Related
Azure availability report is based on the number of heartbeat alert generated in log analytics workspace. Therefore, low availability in the report doesn't really mean that a VM was unavailable due to issues in a given month. It could be different reasons eg. was switched off/deallocated or only created in the last few days in a given month etc.
any logic to improve this any KQL or new azure solution.
Have you gone through looking for VM insights, does that provide you the information you required?
VM insights can help deliver predictable performance and availability of vital applications by identifying performance bottlenecks and network issues and can also help you understand whether an issue is related to other dependencies.
You can create a dashboard with different possible options of kusto queries that depend on what you are looking for.
Here are the few other examples of Kusto Query
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/logs/examples
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/insights/solution-agenthealth#sample-log-searches
You can even have these additional readings of all possible ways of the information you required.
Visualizing data from Azure Monitor
Monitoring Azure virtual machines with Azure Monitor
Create and share dashboards of Log Analytics data
Quickstart: Monitor an Azure virtual machine with Azure Monitor
Collect data from an Azure virtual machine with Azure Monitor
Overview of VM insights
I want to monitor external systems using azure monitor. Is it possible?
For example, I have on-prem Linux server with mysql DB, can I monitor the server and its DB like availability, errors,...?
Firstly, you can use “Azure Monitor agent” that is explained here. Would recommend you to use Azure Monitor Log Analytics agent as instructed here. The reason for it is “Azure Monitor Agent” as informed in this section, currently only Azure VMs are supported and on-premises VMs, virtual machine scale sets, Arc for Servers, Azure Kubernetes Service, and other compute resource types are currently not supported.
Next, If you have “Azure Monitor Log Analytics agent on Windows machine” then you may have to check below things:
As explained here, Change Tracking and Inventory requires linking a Log Analytics workspace to your Automation account so I recommend you to double check it. For a definitive list of supported regions, see Azure Workspace mappings. The region mappings don't affect the ability to manage VMs in a separate region from your Automation account.
Follow this troubleshooting steps in your case (i.e., if you don't see any Change Tracking and Inventory results for Windows machines that have been enabled for the feature).
As mentioned here, note that currently Change Tracking and Inventory currently is experiencing the following issue w.r.t Windows environment: Hotfix updates aren't collected on Windows Server 2016 Core RS3 machines.
There's an awful lot of disjointed documentation on monitoring network/resources in Azure. What I'm looking for is which pieces are needed to get information from VMs, NVA firewalls, azure load balancers, and other network resources and network connectivity into a single pain of glass in Azure. Only concerned about Azure, not on-prem for now.
I've come across azure monitor, log analytics work spaces, event hub, vm extensions, network watcher, insights, etc...but I'm not sure which are required and which are not. One doc leads to the next and I end up with 30 tabs open. I'll also need to be able to push logs to other security devices such as a SIEM.
Does anyone know of a deployment guide that wraps this all up in a more logical fashion? Does anyone have any feedback on which pieces from azure (not 3rd parties) are required at a minimum to accomplish a single pane of glass to view my Azure environment holistically?
General overview of observability in Azure
Likely, the thing you're looking for is Azure Monitor. It's an umbrella term for everything observability related inside Azure.
To store Metrics and Logs you need Log Analytics: it can query data with kusto query language, visualize results, define Alerts on queries.
Alerts is quite a complex beast, as it is spread across the entire cloud. Two types that I use the most:
log-analytics alert (which I mentioned above)
Alerts tab, which is available at every Azure component view. for example, open resource group, and scroll down to Monitoring section
Each component also has a subset of built-in metrics. Likely, you noticed that many azure components on the Overview view display some charts. For example, Azure Storage Account displays Total egress, Total ingress, and other line-charts. When you click on these charts you can customize them. These metrics and charts are free to use.
Microsoft also has all-in-one observability solution for Azure Functions and Web Apps: Application Insights
Dashboards allows to join multiple charts into a single view and share it with others.
If you care about security, Azure proposes Azure Security Center
Deployment/management strategy
I suggest to start with:
Create Log Analytics Workspace, which is the storage for metrics and logs. The azure docs article explains how to design it: how many instances to use, how to rate-limit ingestion (it might be expensive if goes out of control), how to access it and so on.
To get Azure components logs, look for Diagnostic Settings tab at a component page at Azure portal, but not all components has it (sic!). I suggest
sending the most critical data to Log Analytics workspace to store them in a queryable format for 30 days (it's in free tier). This is needed for investigating current issues with your infrastructure
if you might need logs later than 30 days - send them to Storage Account
you mentioned SIEM integration - route required events to Event Hub and then process the stream according to your requirements
So, if you need long-term storage - you need to create Azure Storage Account.
If you need real-time analysis - you need to build a pipeline based on Azure Event Hub.
If you have Azure Functions and Web Apps - add Application Insights. According to my experience, I would suggest starting with a separate instance per each Azure Function resource or Service.
Create Alerts for each component separately. If you do it through UI - open component page at the portal and look for Alerts tab there. If you're automating the process (please do so as soon as possible), do not expect easy trip: I used ARM templates and terraform - in both cases, there are dozens of barely documented features.
Join related components core-metrics into Dashboards and share it with the team. This guide is a good starting point. Note, when you share the dashboard, it's also persisted as an azure resource in the subscription.
Built in audits if a Log Profile exists, but not the destination stores. Would like to specify the Storage Account/Event Hub/Log Analytics Workspace.
Can I enforce those settings? In that approach, to also utilize modern diagnostic settings and send to a storage account and log analytics workspace.
Two (2) options to configure diagnostic settings (besides doing this manually on each resources):
Azure Resource Template (ARM)
This requires you to have a deeper understanding of Azure and Resources. However, it gives you all the flexibility to configure any type of resources and targets (storage, event hub or log analytics). This option does not come with additional feature to check compliancy and remediate any configuration drift.
See Microsoft documentation here
Azure Policy
Configuration can be done through the portal (look for 'policy' under 'all services'). However, only the following resources are covered: Services Bus, Search Services, Event Hub, Stream Analytics, Data Lake Gen 1. On the other hand it comes with compliancy dashboard and remediation.
See Microsoft documentation here
It is possible to connect Azure VM to Log Analytics via Microsoft Monitoring Agent virtual machine extension (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/log-analytics/log-analytics-azure-vm-extension). But the data received in Log Analytics has nothing to say about the subscription or the resource group the VM belongs to. This means that if I have two VMs with the same names in two different resource groups then in Log Analytics there is no way to differentiate between them. So, is there a workaround for this? Is it possible to enrich the data collected by Microsoft Monitoring Agent?
It is not possible to enrich the data collected by Microsoft Monitoring Agent at the moment.
Someone alredy created a request:
https://feedback.azure.com/forums/267889-log-analytics/suggestions/17005000-multi-tenancy-collect-azure-health-logs-from-diff