Azure Virtual Machine - FAQ

Azure Virtual Machine - FAQ

1. How is data collection happening for Azure Virtual Machine monitors?
  1. Microsoft Azure monitor discovery modes in AppManager:
    1. AD Application mode
    2. Organizational Account mode
    3. OAuth mode
  2. Azure VM monitor - Data collection methods:
    1. Azure Monitor
    2. Azure Diagnostic Extension
    3. Guest OS
  3. Till APM v15300:
    1. Data collection is based on the discovery mode selected while adding the monitor.
    2. CPU, Memory, Threads and Processes related counters (Diagnostic Extension metrics) were collected using Azure JARs if the Diagnostic Extension is enabled in all modes.
    3. Disk Utilization, Disk Statistics, Network Interface and Services (Guest OS metrics) were collected using Powershell Remoting only in Organizational Account mode.
    4. Network and Disk related counters (Azure Monitor metrics) were collected only in OAuth mode.
  4. From APM v15300:
    1. Data collection for all metrics will be independent of the discovery modes.
    2. Azure Monitor metrics will be collected by default without any additional prerequisites.
    3. Azure Diagnostic Extension metrics (CPU, Memory, Threads and Process related counters) will be collected if the Diagnostic Extension is enabled in the Azure VM. This data will be stored by Azure in Tables in Azure Storage account, which we collected using Storage Table APIs. 
      Applications Manager can collect diagnostic metrics from Storage accounts in both public and private links, as long as the storage account is accessible from the machine where Applications Manager is installed. For additional information, please refer to this link.
    4. Guest OS metrics (Disk Utilization, Disk Statistics, Network Interface and Services) will be collected using Powershell Remoting in all modes if the Guest OS Monitoring option is enabled in the Edit monitor page of the VM and the required prerequisites are done. This can be done only in Windows installation of Applications Manager and for Windows VMs.
2. What happens in Applications Manager when you delete Azure Virtual Machine in  the Azure portal?
  1. When you delete Azure Virtual Machine in Azure portal, The Azure Virtual Machine (child monitor) in Applications Manager will be deleted in Azure parent monitor's next poll and the following message will be displayed in the child monitor.



3. API used for data collection:
  1. Configuration metrics are collected using below APIs.
    1. Virtual Machine GET API
    2. Network Interface GET API
    3. Public IP Addresses GET API
  2. Azure Monitor data is collected using below API.
    1. Azure Monitor API
  3. Below APIs are used in collecting Azure Diagnostic Extension data
    1. Storage Account List API
    2. Storage Account List Keys API
    3. Query Tables API
4. Why am I not able to enable the Diagnostic Extension in some Linux VMs?
  1. Linux Diagnostic Agent is not supported for all the Linux VMs
  2. Refer the below link to check the supported Linux OS where you can enable the Diagnostic Extension.
    1. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/extensions/diagnostics-linux?tabs=azcli#supported-linux-distributions
5. Monitoring Azure Virtual Machines in proxy setups.
  1. If the AppManager is present in a proxy setup, you need to exclude the hosts of the APIs used to access those APIs and fetch the data.
  2. Below are the list of hosts of the APIs used in Azure Virtual Machine monitoring:
    1. login.microsoftonline.com - Authentication API
    2. management.azure.com - Data collection APIs
    3. <myAccount>.table.core.windows.net - Azure VM Diagnostics Table APIs (myAccount refers to the Storage Account name where diagnostic extension metrics is stored)