Nordlicht Reisen GmbH, a fictional travel agency, has machines, storage accounts, and a network. The metrics (lesson 5.1) are ready, but nobody wants to build charts for every resource individually. Azure Monitor provides ready-made views for this, the insights, and Network Watcher provides tools for the network. The exam calls it: configure and interpret monitoring of VMs, storage accounts, and networks with Azure Monitor Insights and use Network Watcher and Connection Monitor.

Prior knowledge: Metrics, diagnostic settings, and KQL are covered in lessons 5.1 and 5.2, networks, subnets, and NSGs in lessons 4.1 and 4.3. You practice tracking down network errors in lesson 4.7; here you get to know the tools.

Insights: ready-made views

Insights are views and workbooks in Azure Monitor that fit a service. You find them in the portal under Monitor in the Insights section; the name depends on the language setting.

Insights What it shows What you must set up
VM insights performance charts of the guest operating system, workbooks, optionally a dependency map Azure Monitor Agent and a data collection rule (a Log Analytics workspace is required)
Storage insights availability, utilization, latency, and capacity of storage accounts nothing: the storage metrics are collected by default
Network insights topology and a health and metrics view of all network resources nothing: no agents

VM insights

VM insights monitors Azure and hybrid machines in one interface. It simplifies setting up the Azure Monitor Agent and includes prepared data collection rules, charts, and workbooks.

  • The Azure Monitor Agent collects the data. A data collection rule (DCR) determines which data is collected. The VM insights rule sends common performance counters of the guest operating system to the InsightsMetrics table in the Log Analytics workspace. You may use one rule for several machines.
  • Optionally, the rule collects processes and dependencies. Then the tables VMBoundPort, VMComputer, VMConnection, and VMProcess fill up, and the Map view shows which processes talk to which other machines. This needs the Dependency Agent.
  • The old Log Analytics agent has been deprecated since August 31, 2024 and is no longer supported; new setups use the Azure Monitor Agent.
  • Important for exam preparation: Microsoft announces that the Dependency Agent and the Map view will be retired on June 30, 2028. Since September 30, 2025, new VMs can no longer be onboarded to it in the portal. Do not plan it for new environments.
  • At scale: Built-in policy initiatives (Enable Azure Monitor for VMs with Azure Monitoring Agent (AMA) and equivalents for scale sets and hybrid machines) install the agents on new machines within the assignment's scope; for existing machines you run a remediation task (lesson 1.5).
  • In addition, the portal offers a preview with OpenTelemetry metrics; the exam names VM insights with workbooks.

Portal: On the machine, under Monitoring → Insights, choose Configure (or Enable), pick the workspace, and confirm with Review + Enable. According to Microsoft's guide, this takes a few minutes. From Azure Monitor, you see the machines as a group: Monitor → Virtual Machines.

Storage insights

Storage insights shows an overall picture across storage accounts and lets you zoom in on one account. It collects no new data and costs nothing for access; only the Azure Monitor features that you turn on yourself are billed.

  • From Azure Monitor: Monitor → Insights → Storage Accounts. The overview workbook shows five preselected accounts by default (up to 200 with multiple selection) with availability, latency, and errors. The default time range is the last 4 hours.
  • From the storage account: in the Monitoring section, choose Insights. The buttons Failures, Performance, Availability, and Capacity open the matching workbook.
  • Thresholds: Availability is by default at "warning" below 99 percent and "critical" below 90 percent. You change that by editing the workbook and saving it as your own copy.
  • Columns: The overview carries Availability, E2E Latency, Server Latency, and error types; a click on a value opens the matching workbook of the account.

Network insights

Network insights shows topology, health, and metrics of all network resources without agents. A search helps you find dependencies (for example: which resources host my website). The Traffic tab lists the network security groups and shows whether flow logs and Traffic Analytics are turned on. The Diagnostic Toolkit opens the diagnostic tools of Network Watcher.