Azure

Type of Data

Instance Metrics

Description

The Azure Fusion data feed produces a JSON object that contains Azure Virtual Machine (VM) monitoring metrics.

When the data feed runs, it queries the Azure VM monitoring metrics for the last five minutes. The JSON result is based on the most current Azure VM monitoring metrics available. Azure refers to the above monitoring metrics as Diagnostics.

It must be noted that Fusion can obtain server monitoring data for both Linux and Windows Azure virtual machines. The initial Azure/Fusion integration requires a Fusion data feed for each Azure VM that must be monitored and made actionable via Openmix.

Data Feed Format

The Azure Fusion data feed produces a JSON object that contains Azure Virtual Machine monitoring metrics. The Fusion Azure data structure that is sent to Openmix currently looks like this:

      {
        "disk_writes_kbps": 0.279
        "network_in_mb": 3286.48,
        "memory_available_mb": 1479,
        "disk_reads_kbps": 0,
        "memory_available_pct": 88,
        "network_out_mb": 2343.892,
        "cpu_time_pct": 20.5
      }
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Implementation Notes

Azure Diagnostics Implementation

Azure deploys a “monitoring agent” to the VM and the monitoring agent collects the server diagnostics. The monitoring agent does not, by default, save the VM diagnostics to permanent storage. To save the diagnostics so they can be used by Fusion, the VM diagnostics must be saved to an Azure Storage Account.

Steps here are also outlined in this link: Microsoft Azure blog: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/windows-azure-virtual-machine-monitoring-with-wad-extension/

Reconciliation Steps

Verify Azure VM Settings

The first step is to find and verify the Azure VM that we want to monitor and track in Fusion. To find the VM settings, do the following:

• Log in to the Azure portal.
• In the top right menu in the navigation bar, click your email address and click “Switch to Azure Preview Portal.”
• Depending on where your VM is located, click either the Virtual Machines or the Virtual Machines (classic link). Then click the virtual machine you would like to monitor.
• Review the Virtual Machine settings (under Essentials). Click All Settings > Diagnostics.
• If diagnostics are turned on and also showing a Storage Account, you are done with the Azure setup. It means the VM diagnostics are turned on and actively being saved to an Azure storage account.
• Before enabling the diagnostics create a storage account in the same location/region as the VM. The storage account is what allows the VM diagnostics to be saved so they can be accessed via the Azure RESTful API.

Azure Troubleshooting Tips

When an action like creating a storage account or enabling diagnostics for a Virtual Machine is performed, and it doesn’t work, the first and easiest step is to check the notification “bell” icon in the top menu to see if your task was successful. If it is successful, use the browser refresh to refresh the Azure portal. If the completed task is not shown, try refreshing, and it usually shows up.

It’s when you need to enable VM diagnostics and save to a storage account, sometimes things don’t seem to work as expected.

The following are the symptoms and solutions from various issues:

• When enabling diagnostics, you see the storage account you created but when you click “save” it just doesn’t save.

  The easiest thing to do is to make sure you wait a few minutes and then perform a browser refresh on the Virtual Machine. Sometimes Azure just doesn’t show the update.

• When enabling diagnostics, everything looks like it worked correctly, you’ve refreshed the browser many times but your changes are not saving.

  It can be a little tricky to get the right combination and sequence for the diagnostics and storage to work correctly. Here is the sequence that was found to work:

When setting up WINDOWS diagnostics on existing VM:

• In the Azure preview portal ->Virtual Machines -> Settings -> Diagnostics, uncheck all except basic metrics, then select the Storage Account, and click Save.
• Wait while the diagnostics are updated, then refresh the browser.
• If you want to track network transferred in/transferred out data, in diagnostics, check “network and web metrics” and click “Save.”

When setting up LINUX diagnostics on existing VM:

• Azure preview portal ->Virtual Machines -> settings -> diagnostics, uncheck any/all existing diagnostics but select the storage account, click Save.
• Go back in VM -> diagnostics and check the “basic metrics”.

Fusion only tracks basic metrics which include CPU, disk, network, and memory usage. Checking any additional metrics just takes up more storage space and slows down the Fusion / Azure API queries.

When creating the Fusion Azure data feed, what must you do if,

It fails when you Complete/submit the dialog box:

• Make sure the storage account name and access key is correct. You can find these under Azure preview portal -> Storage Account (classic) -> click the storage account being used to save VM diagnostics, click the Key icon.

Fusion log history shows null for all the server metrics.

• Verify that the storage account has the tables that store the VM diagnostic data. Azure preview portal -> Storage Account (classic) -> Click Tables. For a Windows VM, see the WAD Performance Counters Table.

• For Linux, you must see tables that start with WADMetricsPT1M. The PT1M stands for 1 minute tables, PT1H stands for 1 hour tables. We query the PT1M tables to get the last 5 minutes of metric data.

Set up in Fusion

You can access Fusion Data Feeds from the left navigation pane, under Openmix. For initial steps please refer to the Fusion Integration Documentation.

When you get to the service-specific configuration dialog box, enter the following:

• Name: The name given to the data feed. This defaults to “Service - Platform Name” if not specified.
• Run Every: How often the data feed is updated from the service.
• Platform: The Platform that is associated with the data feed.
• Azure Virtual Machine: Windows or Linux machine
• Storage Account Name for Fusion API access. The storage account name is what you set up in the previous steps.
• Storage Account Key for Fusion API access: The storage account key can be found in the storage account settings. The Manage Access Keys screens gives the account key details.

Once the Fusion Azure installation is complete, it is listed on the Fusion data feeds home page with a green status and monitoring metrics in the log history.

To edit a Fusion data feed click the data feed in the list and then click the Edit button. Once you have changed the configuration, click Save. This brings you back to the data feed list with your changes saved and applied to the data feed.