Monitor Azure Blob Storage

This article explains how to monitor your Azure Blob Storage account to ensure your storage is available and performing optimally. Monitoring is crucial for understanding performance, diagnosing issues, and planning capacity.

Key Monitoring Tools and Services

Azure provides several integrated services to help you monitor Blob Storage:

Azure Monitor: The foundational service for collecting, analyzing, and acting on telemetry from your Azure and on-premises environments.
Azure Storage Analytics: A service that stores logs and metrics for storage analytics. You can use it to view and export this data.
Log Analytics: A tool within Azure Monitor that interactively queries log data.
Azure Advisor: Provides recommendations for optimizing your Azure resources for performance, security, cost, and operational excellence.

Metrics for Blob Storage

Azure Monitor collects several metrics for Blob Storage. Key metrics include:

Metric Name	Description	Unit
`Transactions`	The total number of storage transactions.	Count
`Ingress`	The total number of bytes received by the storage account.	Bytes
`Egress`	The total number of bytes sent from the storage account.	Bytes
`Availability`	The percentage of successful requests to the storage service.	Percent
`Latency (Average)`	The average time taken for a request to be processed.	Milliseconds

Viewing Metrics in Azure Portal

You can view these metrics directly in the Azure portal:

Navigate to your storage account in the Azure portal.
In the left-hand menu, under Monitoring, select Metrics.
Choose the metric you want to analyze from the dropdown menu.
Configure the time range, aggregation, and splitting options as needed.

Note: Storage Analytics metrics are stored for 30 days.

Logs for Blob Storage

Azure Storage Analytics can log details about successful and failed requests to your storage service. These logs are invaluable for troubleshooting and auditing.

You can enable logging for Blob Storage by configuring the diagnostic settings in Azure Monitor:

Navigate to your storage account.
Under Monitoring, select Diagnostic settings.
Click Add diagnostic setting.
Select the log categories you want to collect (e.g., StorageRead, StorageWrite, StorageDelete).
Choose where to send the logs:

Send to Log Analytics workspace
Archive to a storage account
Stream to an event hub

Save the settings.

Example Log Query (KQL)

Once logs are sent to a Log Analytics workspace, you can query them using Kusto Query Language (KQL).

AzureDiagnostics
| where ResourceProvider == "MICROSOFT.STORAGE" and Category == "StorageRead"
| summarize count() by CallerIpAddress, OperationName
| order by count_ desc

Setting Up Alerts

Proactive monitoring is essential. You can configure alerts in Azure Monitor based on metrics or log events:

Metric Alerts: Trigger an alert when a specific metric crosses a defined threshold (e.g., high latency, low availability).
Log Alerts: Trigger an alert when a specific log query returns a certain number of results.

To create an alert:

Navigate to Azure Monitor in the Azure portal.
Select Alerts, then click Create > Alert rule.
Define the scope (your storage account).
Configure the condition (metric or log query).
Set the action group to be notified (e.g., email, SMS, webhook).
Define the alert details.

Tip: Consider setting up alerts for increased error rates (e.g., 4xx, 5xx errors) and significant deviations in latency or transaction counts.

Using Azure Advisor

Azure Advisor analyzes your resource configurations and usage patterns to provide tailored recommendations. For Blob Storage, it might suggest:

Optimizing access tiers for cost savings.
Recommendations for capacity planning based on usage trends.
Identifying potential performance bottlenecks.

Access Azure Advisor from the Azure portal and review the recommendations under the "Storage" category.

Best Practices for Monitoring

Regularly review your storage account metrics and logs.
Set up meaningful alerts to be notified of potential issues.
Establish baseline performance metrics to easily identify anomalies.
Use Azure Advisor for proactive optimization recommendations.
Ensure you have adequate retention policies for logs and metrics based on your compliance and troubleshooting needs.

By effectively monitoring your Azure Blob Storage, you can maintain high availability, optimize performance, and ensure efficient operation of your storage solutions.