Azure Monitor Hackathon

About the Hackathon

This hackathon is aiming to walk you though the different features of Azure Monitor, the design proposed here is not a recommendation it's for learning purposes only. Throughout the hackathon you will be working with Azure Monitor, Log Analytics and Application Insights.

At the end of the Hackathon you will understand Azure Monitor capabilities, facilitate an Azure Monitor conversation, and demo key features of Azure Monitor.

Target Audience

This hackathon has been designed for DevOps engineers, administrators and IT Architects to build their knowledge on Azure Monitor. However anyone else who has a passion around Monitoring are more than welcome to attend.

Initial design

Once you deployed the Hackathon you will see two Azure Resource Groups with different set of resources, this includes the VNet, subnets, NSG(s), LB(s), NAT rules, scales set and a fully functional .NET Core Application (eShopOnWeb) to monitor. (see the design below)

Initial deployment

This micro Hackathon is designed to be deployed on a subscription level to roll out a set of resources that are used throughout the challenges. Follow the below step to run the initial deployment:

• Download and install git (cllick here)
• Download and install VS code (click here)
• Install the Bicep extension
• Use VS Code to clone this repository

Tip: if you got an error due to a key verification, then clone using the https not the ssh

• Install Azure CLI (click here)
• Open the repository and open a terminal in VS Code
• Install bicep by running: az bicep install in the command line
• Login to an azure subscription where you can create a resource group by running: az login
• Create a resource group, please use 5 unique (small letters/numbers) of your choice within the RG name, e.g. azuremon-mogas-rg in this case my 5 characters are mogas
• To create the resource group run:

az group create --location westus --resource-group azuremon-mogas-rg

Tip: feel free to change the rg name and location as needed

• Open the main.parameters.json file in code and modify the envPrefixName parameter value with your own unique 5 characters you used above
• By default you will be asked for a password during the deployment, this will be used for all VMs and the SQL DB, if you prefer to add it to the main.parameters.json feel free to do you
• Now you can kick-off the initial deployment by running:

az deployment group create \ 
	--name firstbicep \
	-g azuremon-mogas-rg \
	-f main.bicep \
	-p main.parameters.json

Tip: the name above is the deployment name, you will see this under deployments in the RG properties if you face problems.

Note: if you get the following error:

type object 'datetime.datetime' has no attribute 'fromisoformat'

This is due to a reported bug there is a workaround here.

• Now relax - its gonna take sometime.

Important: once finished, please go to your resource group -> deployments and make sure that there are no errors. If you face any problems check the troubleshooting section at the end of this page

• Once finished check and note the Public IP fqdn of the scale set

it should be named something like: mogasWebScaleSetPip where mogas is your unique 5 characters

Open the fqdn in your browser and you should see the shop

The Challenges

One finished you can start with the challenges.

• Challenge 1: The Basics, Dashboards and Alerts
• Challenge 2: Activity Logs and Update Management
• Challenge 3: Application Insights
• Challenge 4: Containers Monitoring
• Challenge 5: KQL Queries
• Challenge 6: Grafana and Analytics
• Challenge 7: Workbooks

Useful links

These links are you cheat sheet ;-) it's recommended to read before or during the Hackathon

• Send Guest OS metrics to the Azure Monitor metric store
• Get Started with Metrics Explorer
• View and Manage Alerts in Azure Portal
• Create metric alerts with ARM templates
• Create Action Rules
• Monitor your Kubernetes Cluster
• View Kubernetes logs, events, and pod metrics in real-time
• Start Monitoring Your ASP.NET Core Web Application
• What does Application Insights Monitor
• Grafana Integration
• Create interactive reports with workbooks

Troubleshooting

• If the eShop is not logging in, use Firefox.
• If you get the below error, you can enable Azure Defender for VMs on this subscription, if you can't then ignore the error: Subscription is not in the Standard or Standard Trial subscription plan. Please upgrade to use this feature
• Make sure the 5-character name does not contain any uppercase letters
• Make sure the password used adheres to the Azure password policy
• Make sure you are logged into the correct subscription and you have the at least contributors role access.
• Make sure you have the compute capacity in the region you are deploying to and request an increase to the limit if needed.
• Can't get Azure CLI working? use the Azure Cloud Shell. Remember to copy up the bicep template and parameters JSON files before kicking off the deployment.
• If you notice the deployment taking a long time (over 60 mins). Note: this issue has been fixed but I’m leaving it in hear in case it ever surfaces again.

  1. Look at the deployment details to figure out where it’s stuck

  2. If you are stuck on the Visual Studio Custom Script extension (CSE)this is because the Microsoft Image was created with an older version of the CSE and has a bug.
     a. Workaround 1:The workaround has been to log on to the Visual Studio Server and navigate to “C:\Packages\Plugins\Microsoft.Compute.CustomScriptExtension\1.9.2” and double click on “enable” this will kick off the extension and the deployment should continue from here. If the script times out just rerun after you manually kick off the extension and it should finish b. Workaround 2: From the Azure Portal uninstall the CustomScriptExtension (which will fail your deployment).

     c. Then rerun the ARM template and it will pick up where it left off.

Big Thanks to

• Martina Lang for her help and support through out Azure Monitor Journey
• Rob Kuehfus for initialing the idea and creating the very first Azure Monitor Hack - This is Rob the one who invented the Exception in the eShop ;-)
• Kayode Prince for the improving the Azure Monitor Original Hack and supporting this one
• Joerg Jooss for the help within the Application Insights part

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