Azure Load Balancer

Azure Load Balancer is an Azure service that allows you to evenly distribute incoming network traffic across a group of Azure VMs or instances in a Virtual Machine Scale Set. This integration helps in monitoring inbound and outbound data throughput, outbound flows, and the application endpoint health of your Load Balancers.

Log and metric types

For Azure Load Balancer, you can collect the following logs and metrics:

• Load Balancer Health Event. These health event logs are emitted when any issues affecting your load balancer’s health and availability are detected. Learn more.
• Load Balancer Metrics. These metrics are available in Microsoft.Network/loadBalancers namespace.

For more information on supported metrics, refer to Azure documentation.

Setup

note

This app only supports load balancers of Standard and Gateway SKUs.

Azure service sends monitoring data to Azure Monitor, which can then stream data to Eventhub. Sumo Logic supports:

• Metrics collection using our HTTP Logs and Metrics source via Azure Functions deployed using the ARM template.

You must explicitly enable diagnostic settings for each Load Balancer you want to monitor. You can forward logs to the same event hub provided they satisfy the limitations and permissions as described here.

When you configure the event hubs source or HTTP source, plan your source category to ease the querying process. A hierarchical approach allows you to make use of wildcards. For example: Azure/LoadBalancer/Logs and Azure/LoadBalancer/Metrics.

Configure field in field schema

1. Classic UI. In the main Sumo Logic menu, select Manage Data > Logs > Fields.
   New UI. In the top menu select Configuration, and then under Logs select Fields. You can also click the Go To... menu at the top of the screen and select Fields.
2. Search for the following fields:
   • tenant_name. This field is tagged at the collector level. You can get the tenant name using the instructions in the Microsoft Documentation.
   • location. The region to which the resource name belongs.
   • subscription_id. ID associated with a subscription where the resource is present.
   • resource_group. The resource group name where the Azure resource is present.
   • provider_name. Azure resource provider name (for example, Microsoft.Network).
   • resource_type. Azure resource type (for example, storage accounts).
   • resource_name. The name of the resource (for example, storage account name).
   • service_type. Type of the service that can be accessed with an Azure resource.
   • service_name. Services that can be accessed with an Azure resource (for example, Azure SQL databases in Azure SQL Server).
3. Create the fields if they are not present. Refer to Manage fields.

Configure Field Extraction Rules

Create the following Field Extraction Rules (FER) for Azure Storage by following the instructions in the Create a Field Extraction Rule.

Azure location extraction FER

Rule Name: AzureLocationExtractionFER
Applied at: Ingest Time
Scope (Specific Data): tenant_name=*

Parse Expression

json "location", "properties.resourceLocation", "properties.region" as location, resourceLocation, service_region nodrop
| replace(toLowerCase(resourceLocation), " ", "") as resourceLocation
| if (!isBlank(resourceLocation), resourceLocation, location) as location
| if (!isBlank(service_region), service_region, location) as location 
| if (isBlank(location), "global", location) as location
| fields location

Resource ID extraction FER

Rule Name: AzureResourceIdExtractionFER
Applied at: Ingest Time
Scope (Specific Data): tenant_name=*

Parse Expression

json "resourceId", "ResourceId" as resourceId1, resourceId2 nodrop
| if (isBlank(resourceId1), resourceId2, resourceId1) as resourceId
| toUpperCase(resourceId) as resourceId
| parse regex field=resourceId "/SUBSCRIPTIONS/(?<subscription_id>[^/]+)" nodrop
| parse field=resourceId "/RESOURCEGROUPS/*/" as resource_group nodrop
| parse regex field=resourceId "/PROVIDERS/(?<provider_name>[^/]+)" nodrop
| parse regex field=resourceId "/PROVIDERS/[^/]+(?:/LOCATIONS/[^/]+)?/(?<resource_type>[^/]+)/(?<resource_name>.+)" nodrop
| parse regex field=resource_name "(?<parent_resource_name>[^/]+)(?:/PROVIDERS/[^/]+)?/(?<service_type>[^/]+)/?(?<service_name>.+)" nodrop
| if (isBlank(parent_resource_name), resource_name, parent_resource_name) as resource_name
| fields subscription_id, location, provider_name, resource_group, resource_type, resource_name, service_type, service_name

Configure metric rules

Create the following metrics rules by following the instructions in Create a metrics rule.

Azure observability metadata extraction load balancer level

Rule Name: AzureObservabilityMetadataExtractionLoadBalancerLevel

Metric match expression

resourceId=/SUBSCRIPTIONS/*/RESOURCEGROUPS/*/PROVIDERS/*/LOADBALANCERS/* tenant_name=*

Fields extracted	Metric rule
subscription_id	$resourceId._1
resource_group	$resourceId._2
provider_name	$resourceId._3
resource_type	LOADBALANCERS
resource_name	$resourceId._4

Configure metrics collection

In this section, you will configure a pipeline for shipping metrics from Azure Monitor to an Event Hub, onto an Azure Function, and finally to an HTTP Source on a hosted collector in Sumo Logic.

1. Create a hosted collector and tag the tenant_name field. You can get the tenant name using the instructions here.
   
2. Configure an HTTP Source.
3. Configure and deploy the ARM Template.
4. Export metrics to Event Hub. Perform the steps below for each Load Balancer that you want to monitor.
   • Choose Stream to an event hub as the destination.
   • Select AllMetrics.
   • Use the Event hub namespace created by the ARM template in Step 2 above. You can create a new Event hub or use the one created by the ARM template. You can use the default policy RootManageSharedAccessKey as the policy name.
     
5. Tag the location field in the source with the right location value.
   

note

SNAT related metrics will appear only when an outbound rule is configured.

Configure logs collection

Diagnostic logs

In this section, you will configure a pipeline for shipping diagnostic logs from Azure Monitor to an Event Hub.

1. To set up the Azure Event Hubs source in Sumo Logic, refer to the Azure Event Hubs Source for Logs.
2. To create the diagnostic settings in the Azure portal, refer to the Azure documentation. Perform the steps below for each Azure load balancer account that you want to monitor.
   1. Choose Stream to an event hub as the destination.
   2. Select allLogs.
   3. Use the Event Hub namespace and Event Hub name configured in the previous step in the destination details section. You can use the default policy RootManageSharedAccessKey as the policy name.
   
3. Tag the location field in the source with the right location value.
   

Activity Logs

To collect activity logs, follow the instructions here. Do not perform this step if you are already collecting activity logs for a subscription.

note

Since this source contains logs from multiple regions, ensure that you do not tag this source with the location tag.

Installing the Azure Load Balancer app

Now that you have set up data collection, install the Azure Load Balancer Sumo Logic app to use the pre-configured dashboards that provide visibility into your environment for real-time analysis of overall usage.

To install the app:

1. Select App Catalog.
2. In the Search Apps field, search for and then select your app.
3. Optionally, you can scroll down to preview the dashboards included with the app. Then, click Install App (sometimes this button says Add Integration).
4. Click Next.
5. Look for the dialog confirming that your app was installed successfully.
   

Once an app is installed, it will appear in your Personal folder or the folder that you specified. From here, you can share it with other users in your organization. Dashboard panels will automatically start to fill with data matching the time range query received since you created the panel. Results won't be available immediately, but within about 20 minutes, you'll see completed graphs and maps.

Viewing the Azure Load Balancer dashboards

All dashboards have a set of filters that you can apply to the entire dashboard. Use these filters to drill down and examine the data to a granular level.

• You can change the time range for a dashboard or panel by selecting a predefined interval from a drop-down list, choosing a recently used time range, or specifying custom dates and times. Learn more.
• You can use template variables to drill down and examine the data on a granular level. For more information, see Filtering Dashboards with Template Variables.
• Most Next-Gen apps allow you to provide the scope at the installation time and are comprised of a key (_sourceCategory by default) and a default value for this key. Based on your input, the app dashboards will be parameterized with a dashboard variable, allowing you to change the dataset queried by all panels. This eliminates the need to create multiple copies of the same dashboard with different queries.

Overview

The Azure Load Balancer - Overview dashboard provides collective information on Health Probe Status, Average Data Path Availability, Transmission Details, Connection Details, and SNAT Ports Utilization(%).

Administrative Operations

The Azure Load Balancer - Administrative Operations dashboard provides details like distribution by operation type, by operation, recent delete operations, top 10 operations that caused most errors, and users/applications by operation type.

Use this dashboard to:

• Identify top users performing administrative operations.
• View the top 10 operations that caused the most errors.
• View recent read, write, and delete operations.

Health

The Azure Load Balancer - Health dashboard provides details like total failed requests, failures by operation, health probe status trends, and unhealthy backends.

Use this dashboard to:

• Identify failed requests and operations.
• Detect when all backend instances in a pool are not responding to the configured health probes.

Network

The Azure Load Balancer - Network dashboard provides details like Packets Transmitted by the Load Balancer, TCP SYN packets by the Load Balancer, Bytes Transmitted by the Load Balancer, Average Data Path Availability Trend, SNAT Connection Count, SNAT Ports Utilization, Allocated SnatPorts, and Used SnatPorts.

Use this dashboard to:

• Detect high utilization of allocated ports.
• Detect when there is less data path availability than expected due to platform issues.
• Monitor data transmission (packets and bytes) through your load balancers.

Policy

The Azure Load Balancer - Policy dashboard provides details like total success policy events, success policy events, total failed policy events, and failed policy events.

Use this dashboard to:

• Monitor policy events with warnings and errors.
• View recent failed policy events.

Troubleshooting

HTTP Logs and Metrics Source used by Azure Functions

To troubleshoot metrics collection, follow the instructions in Collect Metrics from Azure Monitor > Troubleshooting metrics collection.