Azure Monitoring and Backup - AZ-104¶
📖 Azure Monitor Documentation - Full stack monitoring for applications and infrastructure
Azure Monitor¶
Components¶
- Metrics: Numerical time-series data
- Logs: Text-based records
- Alerts: Notifications based on conditions
- Dashboards: Visual representation
- Workbooks: Interactive reports
Metrics¶
- Collected automatically for Azure resources
- Near real-time (1-minute granularity)
- Retention: 93 days
- Metric Explorer for visualization
- No configuration needed
Log Analytics¶
📖 Log Analytics Overview - Query and analyze log data with KQL
- Centralized log repository
- KQL (Kusto Query Language) for analysis
- Workspace: Container for logs
- Retention: 30-730 days (configurable)
Data Sources: - VMs (agents required) - Application Insights - Diagnostic settings - Azure Activity Log - Custom logs
Agents: - Azure Monitor Agent (AMA): New, recommended - Log Analytics Agent: Legacy (deprecated 2024) - Dependency Agent: Service Map data
Application Insights¶
📖 Application Insights Overview - Application performance monitoring and analytics
- APM for web applications
- Auto-instrumentation or SDK
- Request/response times
- Dependency tracking
- Exception logging
- Live metrics
- Availability tests
Alerts¶
📖 Azure Monitor Alerts - Proactive notifications based on metrics and logs
Alert Types: - Metric alerts - Log query alerts - Activity log alerts - Smart detection (Application Insights)
Components: - Alert rule: Condition to evaluate - Action group: What to do (email, SMS, webhook, Logic App, Azure Function) - Alert processing rule: Override or suppress
Azure Backup¶
📖 Azure Backup Documentation - Cloud-based backup and recovery for Azure and on-premises
Recovery Services Vault¶
📖 Recovery Services Vaults Overview - Centralized management for backup and disaster recovery - Container for backups - Regional resource - Storage replication: LRS, GRS (default) - Soft delete: 14-day retention - Cross Region Restore (CRR)
Backup Solutions¶
Azure VM Backup:
📖 Back up Azure VMs - Protect virtual machines with application-consistent backups
- Agent-less (snapshot-based)
- Application-consistent backups
- Restore: Entire VM, disks, individual files
- Instant restore (snapshot tier)
- Retention: Up to 9999 days
Backup Policies: - Schedule: Daily or weekly - Retention: Daily, weekly, monthly, yearly - Instant restore tier: 1-5 days
Azure Files Backup: - Snapshot-based - Up to 200 snapshots per share - Retention: Up to 10 years
SQL Server in Azure VM: - Database-level backups - Transaction log backups (every 15 minutes) - Point-in-time restore - Long-term retention
Azure Site Recovery (ASR)¶
📖 Azure Site Recovery Documentation - Disaster recovery and business continuity for VMs
- Disaster recovery solution
- Replicate VMs to another region
- Orchestrated failover/failback
- RPO: <5 minutes (async replication)
- RTO: Minutes (depends on failover)
- Test failover without impact
Supported Scenarios: - Azure VM to Azure (region to region) - On-premises VMware/Hyper-V to Azure - Physical servers to Azure
Diagnostic Settings¶
- Export platform logs and metrics
- Destinations:
- Log Analytics workspace
- Storage account (archival)
- Event Hub (streaming)
- Partner solutions
Azure Advisor¶
📖 Azure Advisor Documentation - Personalized best practice recommendations for Azure resources
- Personalized recommendations
- Categories:
- Reliability
- Security
- Performance
- Cost
- Operational Excellence
Azure Service Health¶
📖 Azure Service Health Documentation - Stay informed about Azure service issues and planned maintenance
- Personalized view of Azure health
- Service issues affecting your resources
- Planned maintenance notifications
- Health advisories
- Set up alerts for proactive monitoring
Exam Tips¶
Common Scenarios¶
- VM performance monitoring: Install Azure Monitor Agent, send to Log Analytics
- Application performance: Application Insights
- Alert on high CPU: Metric alert + action group
- Backup VMs: Recovery Services Vault + backup policy
- Disaster recovery: Azure Site Recovery
- Central log repository: Log Analytics workspace
- Archive logs long-term: Diagnostic settings to Storage account
- Query logs: KQL in Log Analytics
- Recommendations: Azure Advisor
Key Points¶
- Metrics automatically collected, logs need configuration
- Recovery Services Vault for backup and ASR
- Soft delete protects against accidental deletion (14 days)
- Application Insights for APM
- KQL for log queries
- Action groups define notification methods
- Diagnostic settings to export logs/metrics