Azure Monitor

Pull metrics from Azure Monitor into xScaler using the OpenTelemetry Collector's azuremonitor receiver. Covers Azure VMs, AKS, Azure SQL, App Service, Storage Accounts, and all other Azure Monitor metrics.

Pattern: OTel Collector azuremonitor receiver → xScaler OTLP endpoint

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Dashboard

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Prerequisites

• Azure subscription with Azure Monitor enabled
• Service Principal with Monitoring Reader role on the subscription or resource group
• OTel Collector (contrib distribution)
• xScaler tenant credentials

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Create a service principal

# Create service principal and note the output (appId, password, tenant)
az ad sp create-for-rbac \
  --name otel-metrics-reader \
  --role "Monitoring Reader" \
  --scopes /subscriptions/YOUR_SUBSCRIPTION_ID

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Configuration

Save as otel-collector-config.yaml:

receivers:
  azuremonitor:
    subscription_id: YOUR_SUBSCRIPTION_ID
    tenant_id: YOUR_TENANT_ID
    client_id: YOUR_CLIENT_ID
    client_secret: YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET
    resource_groups:
      - YOUR_RESOURCE_GROUP
    collection_interval: 1m
    services:
      # Virtual Machines
      - service: microsoft.compute/virtualmachines
        metrics:
          - Percentage CPU
          - Network In Total
          - Network Out Total
          - Disk Read Bytes
          - Disk Write Bytes

      # AKS
      - service: microsoft.containerservice/managedclusters
        metrics:
          - node_cpu_usage_percentage
          - node_memory_working_set_percentage
          - kube_pod_status_ready

      # Azure SQL
      - service: microsoft.sql/servers/databases
        metrics:
          - cpu_percent
          - connection_successful
          - storage_percent
          - dtu_consumption_percent

      # App Service
      - service: microsoft.web/sites
        metrics:
          - CpuTime
          - Requests
          - Http5xx
          - AverageResponseTime
          - MemoryWorkingSet

processors:
  memory_limiter:
    check_interval: 1s
    limit_mib: 512
  batch:
    timeout: 30s
    send_batch_size: 1000

exporters:
  otlphttp/xscaler:
    endpoint: https://euw1-01.m.xscalerlabs.com
    headers:
      Authorization: "Bearer <token>"
      X-Scope-OrgID: "<tenant-id>"
    compression: gzip

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers:  [azuremonitor]
      processors: [memory_limiter, batch]
      exporters:  [otlphttp/xscaler]

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Logs

Azure Monitor Logs — route diagnostic logs to an Event Hub and forward to xScaler using an OTel Collector with the azureeventhub receiver.

Key metrics

Service	Metric	Description
VMs	Percentage CPU	CPU utilisation %
VMs	Network In Total	Bytes received
VMs	Network Out Total	Bytes sent
AKS	node_cpu_usage_percentage	Node CPU %
AKS	node_memory_working_set_percentage	Node memory %
Azure SQL	cpu_percent	Database CPU %
Azure SQL	connection_successful	Successful connections
Azure SQL	dtu_consumption_percent	DTU usage %
App Service	Requests	Total HTTP requests
App Service	Http5xx	Server errors
App Service	AverageResponseTime	Response time (s)

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Useful PromQL queries

# VM CPU across all VMs
avg(azure_vm_percentage_cpu_average)

# App Service 5xx error rate
rate(azure_app_service_http5xx_total[5m])

# Azure SQL DTU usage
azure_sql_dtu_consumption_percent_average

# AKS node memory pressure
azure_aks_node_memory_working_set_percentage_average > 85