Forum Discussion
Live Monitoring Billable Network Out for Current Day
Hi Stu,
Are you using any Azure services to monitor your current network usage and what are the services you are monitoring for the "Network Out"?
KelvinYeoI use the billing/usage API to query past data out costs but I need to be able to monitor current/today/live data usage for a resource/resource group. Is this possible? The services I am wanting to monitor are virtual machines / network interfaces.
StuFranks yea it is definitely possible, I believe you may be looking at the wrong place previously.
In Azure, you can actually leverage on https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/overview, a solution that encompasses multiple monitoring services that allow you to monitor various services within Azure.
Since you are looking at identifying how much data has gone in and out from your VMs for the current day, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/vm/vminsights-overview might just fits in the picture.
You can take a look at this https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/analysis-of-network-connection-data-with-azure-monitor-for-virtual-machines/ written by https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/author/sckingho/ , it provides a comprehensive guide on how to set it up in your environment, there are some configurations that need to be done.
One of the sample charts you can get from it is something like this
However, do take note that the network chart on the Azure VM Overview only displays network traffic that will be billed. It does not include inter-virtual network traffic.
Whereas the data and charts shown for VM insights is based on data from the guest VM and the network chart displays all TCP/IP traffic that is inbound and outbound to that VM, including inter-virtual network.
Lastly, there are actually tons of monitoring services available in Azure Monitor, depending on what are your requirements, you are bound to find something that you need in there.
Do let me know if it helps 😃
This was some really helpful insight, thank you! Particularly this part:
> However, do take note that the network chart on the Azure VM Overview only displays network traffic that will be billed. It does not include inter-virtual network traffic.
You are half right with me looking to "identify how much data has gone in and out from your VMs for the current day" however I also want to be seeing only the billable data within that constraint so the VM Overview stuff ticks that box from what I gather.
Next is to work out how to get this information from the API (so any tips on that greatly appreciated, otherwise I'll poke at end-points to see what I can get).
Thanks again!
Is there any reason why you would want to get the data via API?
If not, you can actually export the data without using API because as part of https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/vm/vminsights-overview, all the metrics would be sent to Azure Log Analytics Workspace (LAW) and there are several https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/logs/logs-data-export?tabs=portal in LAW. E.g. Exporting data to an Azure Storage Account or Azure Event Hubs and etc.
Below is the illustration of one of the data export options workflow for your reference.
You can explore the various data export options in the link I have provided and let me know if that has what you are looking for.
Cheers!