A Guide to Creating an Alert for Tracking Metrics that Measure your Resource

Overview

Azure is a cloud computing platform that offers a wide range of services for building, deploying, and managing applications and services. When you use Azure, it’s important to keep track of the resources you are using, so you can monitor their performance and ensure that you are using them efficiently. One way to do this is by setting up alerts that collect and track metrics that measure your resources.

Azure Monitor

Before we dive into creating an alert, it’s worth taking a moment to discuss Azure Monitor.

Metrics

Metrics are a fundamental component of Azure Monitor. Metrics are numerical measurements that reflect the performance and health of your resources. Azure provides various metrics for various types of resources, such as virtual machines, storage accounts, and databases. Metrics are collected at regular intervals and stored in Azure Monitor.

Alerts

Alerts are notifications that are triggered when specific conditions are met. In Azure, alerts can be set up to notify you when certain metrics reach predefined thresholds. For example, you might set up an alert to notify you when the CPU usage of a virtual machine exceeds a certain percentage for a specified period.

Pre-requisites

Sign in to the Azure Portal

The Monitor’s Insights should be enabled for the required resources

• Sign in to the Azure portal, search for monitor and click on it
• Inside Monitor on the left blade under insights, find VM, and click on it
• Select configure insights and inside not monitored enable monitoring for required VMs

Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1: Identify the Resource to Monitor

The first step is to identify the resource you want to monitor. Azure offers various resources, including virtual machines, storage accounts, and databases. Let’s say we want to monitor a virtual machine for this example.

Step 2: Select the Metric to Monitor

Once you have identified the resource you want to monitor, the next step is to select the metric you want to track. Azure offers a wide range of metrics for each resource, such as CPU usage, memory usage, and network traffic. For this example, let’s say we want to monitor the CPU usage of the virtual machine.

Step 3: Create the Alert Rule

To create the alert rule, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Azure portal and Search for Monitor
2. Click on the “Alerts” tab
3. Click on the “New alert rule” button

4. In the Create alert rule wizard page, select the scope, and in the resource, select the virtual machines

5. Now select the VM required and click apply (Metrics will be applied for the single service only)

6. In the “Condition” section, select the metric you want to monitor (in our example, CPU usage)

7. Select the comparison operator you want to use (e.g., greater than, less than, etc.)

8. Enter the threshold value for the metric. This is the value at which the alert will be triggered

9. All the above values can be changed as per the requirement, and click actions

10. In the “Actions” section, select the action you want to take when the alert is triggered. For example, you can send an email notification, run a webhook, or trigger an Azure Function

11. If no action group is available, then create a new action group

12. Inside the notification type, select Email/SMS.

13. On the right pane, select Email, enter your Email ID, and Select yes to Enable the common alert schema.

14. In the alert rule wizard page, the action group will be selected automatically after the creation, and click on the details

15. Inside details, select the severity and provide any name for the alert rule

16. Review and create the alert rule

Step 4: Test the Alert Rule

Once you have created the alert rule, testing it to ensure it works correctly is a good idea. To do this, you can manually trigger the alert by simulating a high CPU usage on the virtual machine.

To simulate high CPU usage, you can use the following PowerShell command:

powershell

Replace “processname” with the name of the process you want to simulate high CPU usage for.

After running this command, the CPU usage of the virtual machine should exceed the threshold value you set in the alert rule, and the alert should be triggered.

Step 5: Monitor and Fine-tune the Alert Rule

After testing the alert rule, monitoring it to ensure it works correctly over time is important. You can monitor the alert rule by checking the alert history and reviewing any actions taken when the alert was triggered.

If the alert rule is triggering too frequently, you may need to adjust the threshold value to make it less sensitive. Conversely, if the alert rule is not triggering frequently enough, you may need to adjust the threshold value to make it more sensitive.

Conclusion

Creating an alert in Azure is a simple process that can help you monitor your resources in real-time. By creating an alert that collects and tracks metrics in Azure, you can ensure that your resources perform optimally and avoid potential issues before they become major problems. Regularly review and update your alerts to ensure they remain relevant and effective in the ever-changing Azure environment.

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