Cloud-native architectures leveraging distributed Azure workloads such as Azure App Services, Azure SQL Database, and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) must ensure proactive reliability and optimal performance. Traditional static thresholds struggle in dynamic, highly variable environments, resulting in either alert fatigue or missed critical events. Azure Monitor’s Baseline Alerting capability provides an effective, data-driven alternative.
Introduction
Azure Monitor Baseline Alerts (AMBA) is a powerful, policy-driven solution that provides preconfigured alert definitions for a broad range of Azure services. By leveraging historical performance data and dynamic thresholds, AMBA ensures you can detect genuine anomalies while minimizing alert noise.
In this guide, we focus on the service-oriented aspects of AMBA, show how it helps standardize alerting across your environment, and point you to relevant documentation for further details.
What Are Azure Monitor Baseline Alerts?
AMBA is designed to simplify and standardize alerting across your Azure estate. Rather than manually creating alert rules for each resource, AMBA uses best-practice recommendations defined by Microsoft and the community. These alerts are organized by service type, meaning you can quickly find and deploy the right alerts for:
- Compute resources: Virtual Machines, Virtual Machine Scale Sets, and App Services.
- Databases: Azure SQL Database and Cosmos DB.
- Networking: Virtual Networks, Application Gateways, Load Balancers, and more.
- Storage: Storage Accounts, and related data services.
- Others: Specialized services such as Kubernetes, Automation, and Key Vault.
For a comprehensive list of service-specific alert definitions, see the AMBA Services Page.
Dynamic Versus Static Alerting
Traditional alerting systems often rely on static thresholds that can lead to excessive noise during periods of normal variation. AMBA improves upon this by using dynamic thresholds:
- Dynamic Thresholds: Automatically adjust based on historical metrics and usage patterns.
- Smart Detection: Employs machine learning to fine-tune alerts, reducing false positives and ensuring timely notifications.
Learn more about setting up dynamic thresholds in Azure Monitor in the Microsoft Learn article on alert rules.
Key Services and Their Metrics
AMBA organizes alerts by Azure service, allowing you to deploy a tailored set of alerts across your environment. Here are some examples:
Compute
- Azure Virtual Machines & Scale Sets: Monitor CPU utilization, memory consumption, disk I/O, and network traffic.
- Azure App Service: Alert on response times, HTTP errors, and overall application health.
Databases
- Azure SQL Database: Track DTU or vCore usage, query performance, and blocked queries.
- Cosmos DB: Monitor throughput, latency, and consistency metrics.
Networking
- Virtual Networks and Application Gateways: Keep an eye on connectivity, latency, and packet loss.
- Load Balancers: Alert on unhealthy backend instances and unusual traffic patterns.
Storage
- Azure Storage Accounts: Monitor availability, capacity usage, and throughput for different storage tiers.
Each service comes with a set of preconfigured alert rules that can be deployed via Azure Policy, ARM templates, or Bicep.
This approach ensures consistency and scalability as your environment grows.
Best Practices for Implementing AMBA
- Review Service Recommendations: Start by exploring the AMBA Services Page to understand which alerts are available for your resources.
- Customize Sensitivity: Adjust dynamic threshold sensitivity based on your specific workloads—what works for production might differ from development environments.
- Leverage Policy Initiatives: Deploy alerts across your subscriptions using Azure Policy initiatives. This ensures that new resources automatically receive the appropriate alert configurations.
- Integrate with Action Groups: Set up Action Groups to deliver notifications through your preferred channels (email, SMS, webhooks, etc.) so that alerts feed directly into your incident management system.
- Regularly Review and Tune: Monitor alert activity and iterate on your configurations. Use Azure Monitor Workbooks and dashboards to visualize and refine your alerting strategy.
For more guidance on best practices, check out the Azure Well-Architected Framework on Monitoring and Alerting.
Resources
Microsoft