Azure Virtual Machine

Azure Virtual Machine is a virtualized computing environment on Microsoft's cloud platform, that allows users to run applications and tasks on a dedicated, scalable, and on-demand basis. Azure Virtual Machine (VM) provides scalable computing capacity in the Azure Cloud. You can use Azure VM to launch as many or as few virtual servers as you need, configure security and networking, and manage storage.

The Sumo Logic app for Azure VM allows you to collect your VM instance metrics and display them using predefined dashboards. The app provides dashboards to display analysis of VM instance metrics for CPU, disk, network, cache, and memory. Also, it provides detailed insights into all audit events associated with VM instances and specifically helps identify changes, errors, and user activities.

Log and metric types

For Azure Virtual Machine, you can collect the following logs and metrics:

• Activity logs. To learn more about the different Activity log category types and schemas collected for Azure Virtual Machine, refer to the Azure documentation.
• Virtual Machine Metrics. These metrics are available in Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines, Microsoft.Compute/virtualmachineScaleSets namespace. For more information on supported metrics and their units, refer to the Azure documentation.

Setup

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

• Logs collection from Azure Monitor using our Azure Event Hubs source.

You must explicitly enable diagnostic settings for each Virtual Machine 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/VM/ActivityLogs, Azure/VM/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 here.
   • location. The region to which the resource name belongs to.
   • 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 a Azure resource.
   • service_name. Services that can be accessed with an Azure resource (for example, in Azure Container Instances service is Subscriptions).
3. Create the fields if they are not present. Refer to Manage fields.

Configure metric rules

• Azure Observability Metadata Extraction VMName

  In case this rule already exists, then no need to create it again.

Rule Name: AzureObservabilityMetadataExtractionVMName

Metric match expression

tenant_name=* namespace=Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines resource_name=*

Fields extracted	Metric rule
vmname	$resource_name._1

Configure metrics collection

note

The Sumo Logic metrics source for Azure is currently in Beta. To participate, contact your Sumo Logic account executive.

1. To set up the Azure Metrics source in Sumo Logic, refer to the shared beta documentation.
2. In the Sumo Logic Azure Metrics source configuration, configure namespaces as Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines and Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachineScaleSets.

Configure logs collection

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

Diagnostic logs

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 Azure portal, refer to the Azure documentation. Perform the steps below for each Azure Virtual Machine namespace 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, refer to the Collecting Logs for the Azure Audit App from Event Hub section in the Azure Audit documentation. Do not perform this step in case you are already collecting activity logs for a subscription.

note

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

Installing the Azure Virtual Machine app

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 Virtual Machine 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 Virtual Machine - Overview dashboard allows you to gain insights into the performance of your VMs by monitoring and analyzing your VM's usage metrics such as VM availability, CPU usage, read/write ops, cache hits, VM usage, and average latencies.

OS/Disk

The Azure VM - OS/Disk dashboard provides details on the operational activities and status of your Azure VM OS and Data disks.

Network

The Azure VM - Network dashboard provides detailed information about VM network activities based on incoming and outgoing packets and bytes.

Disk

The Azure VM - Disk dashboard provides details on the operational activities and status of your Azure VM disks and premium disks.

Administrative Operations

The Azure VM - Administrative Operations dashboard provides details on the operational activities and status of your Azure Virtual Machine resources.

Use this dashboard to:

• Monitor the distribution of operation types and their success rates to ensure proper functioning of your Virtual Machine.
• Identify potential issues by analyzing the top operations causing errors and correlating them with specific users or applications.
• Track recent write and delete operations to maintain an audit trail of changes made to your Virtual Machine.

Policy and Recommendations

The Azure Virtual Machine - Policy and Recommendations dashboard provides details on policy events and recommendations for your Azure Virtual Machine resources.

Use this dashboard to:

• Monitor the success and failure rates of policy events to ensure proper configuration and compliance.
• Track and analyse recent recommendations to improve the performance and security of your Vaults setup.
• Identify trends in policy events and recommendations over time to proactively address potential issues.

CPU

The Azure VM - CPU dashboard provides details on the CPU metrics and usage of your Azure VM CPU.

Cache

The Azure VM - Cache dashboard provides details on the status and usage of your Azure VM cache resources.

Temp Disk

The Azure VM - Temp Disk dashboard provides details on the operational activities and status of your Azure VM Temp Disk.

Create monitors for Azure Virtual Machine app

From your App Catalog:

1. From the Sumo Logic navigation, select App Catalog.
2. In the Search Apps field, search for and then select your app.
3. Make sure the app is installed.
4. Navigate to What's Included tab and scroll down to the Monitors section.
5. Click Create next to the pre-configured monitors. In the create monitors window, adjust the trigger conditions and notifications settings based on your requirements.
6. Scroll down to Monitor Details.
7. Under Location click on New Folder.
   note

   By default, monitor will be saved in the root folder. So to make the maintenance easier, create a new folder in the location of your choice.

8. Enter Folder Name. Folder Description is optional.
   tip

   Using app version in the folder name will be helpful to determine the versioning for future updates.

9. Click Create. Once the folder is created, click on Save.

Azure Virtual Machine alerts

These alerts are metric based and will work for all Virtual Machine.

Alert Name	Description	Alert Condition	Recover Condition
Azure Virtual Machine - Available Memory Monitor	This alert is triggered when memory drop under 1GB are detected for any VM.	Count < 1	Count >= 1
Azure Virtual Machine - CPU Usage Percentage Monitor	This alert is triggered when CPU usage spikes above 80% are detected for any VM.	Count >= 80	Count < 80
Azure Virtual Machine - Availability Monitor	This alert is triggered when VM Availability drops under 100% are detected for any VM.	Count < 1	Count = 1
Azure Virtual Machine - Data Disk IOPs Consumed Monitor	This alert is triggered when Data Disk IOPs consumption percentage spikes above 95% are detected for any VM.	Count > 95	Count =< 95
Azure Virtual Machine - OS Disk IOPs Consumed Monitor	This alert is triggered when OS Disk IOPs consumption percentage spikes above 95% are detected for any VM.	Count > 95	Count =< 95

Upgrade/Downgrade the Azure Virtual Network app (optional)

To update the app, do the following:

note

Next-Gen App: To install or update the app, you must be an account administrator or a user with Manage Apps, Manage Monitors, Manage Fields, Manage Metric Rules, Manage Collectors capability depending upon the different content types part of the app.

1. Select App Catalog.
2. In the Search Apps field, search for and then select your app.
   Optionally, you can identify apps that can be upgraded in the Upgrade available section.
3. To upgrade the app, select Upgrade from the Manage dropdown.
   1. If the upgrade does not have any configuration or property changes, you will be redirected to the Preview & Done section.
   2. If the upgrade has any configuration or property changes, you will be redirected to Setup Data page.
      1. In the Configure section of your respective app, complete the following fields.
         1. Field Name. If you already have collectors and sources setup, select the configured metadata field name (eg _sourcecategory) or specify other custom metadata (eg: _collector) along with its metadata Field Value .
      2. Click Next. You will be redirected to the Preview & Done section.

Post-update

Your upgraded app will be installed in the Installed Apps folder, and dashboard panels will start to fill automatically.

note

See our Release Notes changelog for new updates in the app.

To revert the app to a previous version, do the following:

1. Select App Catalog.
2. In the Search Apps field, search for and then select your app.
3. To version down the app, select Revert to < previous version of your app > from the Manage dropdown.

Uninstalling the Azure Virtual Network app (optional)