Monitor and Maintain Azure Resources
This domain covers observing the health and performance of Azure resources and protecting them through backup. You will collect and query telemetry, configure alerts, diagnose networking, and set up recovery. The goal is keeping workloads healthy and recoverable.
Azure Monitor and Metrics
Azure Monitor is the central platform for collecting metrics and logs from Azure resources. Metrics are numeric time-series data such as CPU percentage or disk IOPS that are available in near real time. You use metrics to visualize performance and to drive alert rules. Diagnostic settings route platform logs and metrics to destinations like a Log Analytics workspace, storage, or Event Hubs.
Log Analytics and KQL
A Log Analytics workspace stores log data collected by Azure Monitor, and you query it using Kusto Query Language (KQL). KQL lets you filter, aggregate, and join across log tables to investigate issues and build reports. Workbooks and dashboards can visualize query results. Centralizing logs in a workspace enables cross-resource analysis and long-term retention.
Alerts and Action Groups
Alert rules evaluate metrics or log queries against conditions and fire when thresholds are crossed, for example CPU above 80 percent for five minutes. When an alert triggers, an action group defines the response, such as sending email or SMS, calling a webhook, or running an automation runbook. Alerts turn passive monitoring into proactive notification. Metric alerts are near real time, while log alerts run on a query schedule.
Network Watcher
Network Watcher provides tools to monitor and diagnose networking, including connection troubleshoot, IP flow verify, next hop, and NSG flow logs. These help pinpoint why traffic is blocked or misrouted between resources. Connection monitor can track connectivity and latency over time. Network Watcher complements Azure Monitor by focusing specifically on network-level diagnostics.
Azure Backup and Recovery Services Vault
Azure Backup protects VMs, files, and databases by storing recovery points in a Recovery Services vault according to a backup policy that defines schedule and retention. You can restore an entire VM, a disk, or individual files from these recovery points. The vault also underpins Azure Site Recovery for disaster recovery replication. Regular, policy-driven backups are the foundation of resource maintenance and business continuity.