Monitoring Logs with Azure

This tutorial guides you through the essential steps of monitoring logs in Azure, a critical aspect of maintaining the health, performance, and security of your cloud applications and services.

Understanding Azure Monitoring

Azure provides a robust suite of services for collecting, analyzing, and acting on telemetry data from your cloud resources. Key services include:

Azure Monitor: The central service for collecting and using telemetry from your Azure and on-premises environments. It helps you understand performance and detect anomalies.
Log Analytics: A tool within Azure Monitor that lets you query and analyze log data using a powerful query language (Kusto Query Language - KQL).
Application Insights: An APM (Application Performance Management) service for developers to monitor live applications, detect anomalies, and diagnose issues without involving IT.

Tutorial Steps

Step 1: Enable Azure Monitor for your Resource

Most Azure services can be configured to send diagnostic logs to Azure Monitor. For example, to enable monitoring for a Virtual Machine:

Navigate to your Virtual Machine resource in the Azure portal.
In the left-hand menu, under "Monitoring", select "Diagnostic settings".
Click "Turn on diagnostics".
Choose the logs and metrics you want to collect.
Select a destination for the logs, such as a Log Analytics workspace.
Click "Save".

Step 2: Navigate to Log Analytics Workspace

Once logs are being collected, you can access them through your Log Analytics workspace.

In the Azure portal, search for and select "Log Analytics workspaces".
Click on the name of the workspace you configured in Step 1.

Step 3: Querying Logs with Kusto Query Language (KQL)

Log Analytics uses KQL to query your data. Here are some basic examples:

To view all logs from the last 24 hours:


// View all logs from the last 24 hours
AzureActivity
| where TimeGenerated > ago(24h)

To view security events:


SecurityEvent
| where TimeGenerated > ago(1d)
| take 50

To find failed login attempts for a specific resource:


SigninLogs
| where ResultType != 0
| where ResourceProvider == "MICROSOFT.COMPUTE" // Example resource provider
| project TimeGenerated, UserPrincipalName, IPAddress, ResultDescription
| order by TimeGenerated desc

Step 4: Setting up Alerts

Proactively identify issues by configuring alerts based on your log data.

Within your Log Analytics workspace, navigate to "Logs".
Write a query that identifies the condition you want to alert on.
Click "New alert rule".
Configure the alert details: condition, actions (e.g., send an email), and severity.

Best Practice: Regularly review your diagnostic settings and log retention policies to ensure you are collecting the necessary data and managing storage costs effectively.

Next Steps

Explore more advanced KQL queries, set up dashboards to visualize your log data, and integrate Azure Monitor with other Azure services for a comprehensive management solution.