Collect client performance counters by using VM insights

Besides monitoring your VM host's health, utilization, and performance, you need to monitor the software and processes running on your VM. These are called the VM guest or client. In this unit, you enable the Azure Monitor VM insights feature, which offers a quick way to start monitoring the VM client.

The VM client includes the operating system and other workloads and applications. To monitor the software running on your VM, you install the Azure Monitor Agent, which collects data from inside the VM. VM insights:

• Installs Azure Monitor Agent on your VM.
• Creates a DCR that collects and sends a predefined set of client performance data to a Log Analytics workspace.
• Presents the data in curated workbooks.

Although you don't need to use VM insights to install Azure Monitor Agent, create DCRs, or set up workbooks, VM insights makes setting up VM client monitoring easy. VM insights provides you with a basis for monitoring the performance of your VM client and mapping the processes running on your machine.

Enable VM insights

1. In the Azure portal, on your VM's Overview page, select Insights from the left navigation menu under Monitoring.

2. On the Insights page, select Enable.

3. Under Data collection rule, note the properties of the DCR that VM insights creates. In the DCR description, Processes and dependencies (Map) is set to Disabled, which you can change to Enabled or review this article on how-to if greyed out. Also a default Log Analytics workspace is created or assigned.

4. Select Configure.

   

   Configuration of the workspace and the agent installation typically takes 5 to 10 minutes. It can take another 5 to 10 minutes for data to become available to view in the portal.

5. When the deployment finishes, confirm that the Azure Monitor Agent is installed by looking on the Properties tab of the VM's Overview page under Extensions + applications.

   On the Monitoring tab of the Overview page, under Performance and utilization, you can see that Guest OS metrics are now being collected.

   

View VM insights

VM insights creates a DCR that sends client VM performance counters to Azure Monitor Logs. Because the DCR sends its metrics to Azure Monitor Logs, you don't use Metrics Explorer to view the metrics data that VM insights collects.

To view the VM insights performance graphs and maps:

1. Select Insights from the VM's left navigation menu under Monitoring.

2. Near the top of the Insights page, select the Performance tab. The prebuilt VM insights Performance workbook shows charts and graphs with performance-related data for the current VM.

   

   • You can customize the view by specifying a different Time range at the top of the page and different aggregations at the top of each graph.

   • Select View Workbooks to select from other available prebuilt VM insights workbooks. Select Go To Gallery to select from a gallery of other VM insights workbooks and workbook templates, or to edit and create your own workbooks.

3. If enabled earlier, select the Map tab on the Insights page to see the workbook for the Map feature. The map visualizes the VM's dependencies by discovering running process groups and processes that have active network connections over a specified time range.