Making Azure the Best Place to Observe Your Apps with OpenTelemetry
Our goal is to make Azure the most observable cloud. To that end, we are refactoring Azure’s native observability platform to be based on OpenTelemetry, an industry standard for instrumenting applications and transmitting telemetry.Accelerate your observability journey with Azure Monitor pipeline (preview)
In the ever-evolving landscape of digital infrastructure, transparency in resource and application performance is imperative. Success hinges on visibility, and that’s true whether you’re operating on Azure, on-premise, or at the edge. As organizations scale their infrastructures and applications, the volume of observability data naturally increases. This surge can complicate the management of networking, data storage and ingestion, often forcing a trade-off between cost management and observability. The complexity doesn’t end there. The very tools designed to ingest, process, and route this data can be both costly and complex, adding layers of operational challenges. Moreover, edge infrastructure is deployed near IoT devices for optimal data processing, high availability, and reduced latency. This adds its own set of challenges when it comes to collecting telemetry from such constrained environments. Recognizing these challenges, our team has been focused on providing a robust, highly scalable, and secure data ingestion solution through Azure Monitor. We are thrilled to announce the preview of the Azure Monitor pipeline at edge. What is Azure Monitor pipeline? Azure Monitor pipeline, similar to ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) process, enhances traditional data collection methods. It streamlines data collection from various sources through a unified ingestion pipeline and utilizes a standardized configuration approach that is more efficient and scalable. This is particularly beneficial for cloud-based monitoring in Azure. We are now extending our Azure Monitor pipeline capabilities from the cloud to the edge, enabling high-scale data ingestion with centralized configuration management. What is Azure Monitor pipeline at edge? Azure Monitor pipeline at edge is a powerful solution designed to facilitate high-scale data ingestion and routing from edge environments to Azure Monitor for observability. It leverages the robust capabilities of the vendor-agnostic tool - OpenTelemetry Collector, which is used by enterprises worldwide to manage high volumes of telemetry each month. With the Azure Monitor pipeline at edge, organizations can tap into the same highly scalable platform with a standardized configuration and reliability. Whether dealing with petabytes of data or seeking consistent observability experience across Azure, edge, and multi-cloud, this solution empowers organizations to reliably collect telemetry and drive operational excellence. The Azure Monitor pipeline at edge is equipped with out-of-the-box capabilities to receive telemetry from a diverse range of resources and route it to Azure Monitor. Here are some key features: High scale data ingestion: Customers have various devices and resources at edge, emitting high volume of data. With Azure Monitor pipeline at edge, you can seamlessly scale to support ingestion of high volume of data in the cloud. Azure Monitor pipeline can be deployed on your on-premises Kubernetes cluster as an Arc Kubernetes cluster extension. This allows it to adapt to your data scaling needs by running multiple replica sets and provides you with full control to define workflows and route high-volume data to Azure Monitor. Observing resources in isolated environments: In the manufacturing sector, resources are often located in isolated network zones without direct cloud connectivity, posing challenges for telemetry collection. With the Azure Monitor pipeline at edge, combined with Azure IoT Layered Network Management, you can facilitate a connection between Azure and Kubernetes clusters in isolated networks, deploy the Azure Monitor pipeline at edge, collect data from resources in segmented networks, and route it to Azure Monitor for comprehensive observability. Reliable data ingestion and prevent data loss: Edge environments frequently encounter intermittent connectivity, leading to potential data loss and disrupting data continuity. The Azure Monitor pipeline at edge allows you to cache logs during periods of intermittent connectivity. When connectivity is re-established, your data is synchronized with Azure Monitor, preventing data loss. Getting started It’s super easy to get started! You need to deploy the Azure Monitor pipeline on a single Arc-enabled Kubernetes cluster in your environment. Once that is done, you can configure your resources to emit the telemetry to Azure Monitor pipeline at edge and ingest into Azure Monitor for observability. Once you Arc-enable your on-prem Kubernetes cluster and the prerequisites are met, go the Extension section, select Azure Monitor pipeline extension (preview) and create the instance. Alternatively, from the search bar in the Azure portal, select Azure Monitor pipeline and then click Create. Enter the information related to the pipeline instance. The Dataflow tab allows you to create and edit dataflows for the pipeline instance. Configure your resources to emit the telemetry to the Azure Monitor pipeline. Learn more in our documentation. Pricing There is no additional cost to use Azure Monitor pipeline to send data to Azure Monitor. You will be only charged for data ingestion as per the current pricing. FAQ What telemetry can be collected using Azure Monitor pipeline? Currently, in public preview, you can collect syslogs and OTLP logs using Azure Monitor pipeline at edge. We will keep expanding the data collection capabilities based on your feedback and requirements. How can I perform transformations on the telemetry that is collected? You can certainly transform your telemetry! Since this is an extension of Azure Monitor pipeline, you can perform the data collection transformations in the Azure Monitor pipeline at cloud. Is this another agent for data collection? Azure Monitor pipeline at edge is engineered to function in environments where installing agents on resources is not feasible, whether due to technical limitations or warranty concerns. It enables you to get the telemetry from these resources and acts as a central forwarding component to ingest high volume data. I have 100 Linux servers in my on-prem environment. Do I need to deploy Azure Monitor pipeline at edge on all of them? You need to deploy the Azure Monitor pipeline at edge on a single Arc-enabled Kubernetes cluster and configure it to ingest data into Azure Monitor. Once that is completed, you can configure your Linux servers to emit telemetry to the Azure Monitor pipeline at edge instance.Optimizing Cost using the Azure Monitor OpenTelemetry Distro
Immediately after Willow deployed the Azure Monitor OpenTelemetry Distro, their Azure Costs spiked, and they approached Azure Monitor Team for strategies to optimize cost. By following the strategies in this blog, they were able to reduce costs by over 90%!Announcing Application Insights SDK 3.x for .NET
Microsoft remains committed to making OpenTelemetry the foundation of modern observability on Azure. Today, we’re excited to take the next step on that journey with a major release of the Application Insights SDK 3.x for .NET. Migrate to OpenTelemetry with a Major Version Bump With Application Insights SDK 3.x, developers can migrate to OpenTelemetry-based instrumentation with dramatically less effort. Until now, migrating from classic Application Insights SDK to the Azure Monitor OpenTelemetry Distro required a clean install and code updates. With this release, most customers can adopt OpenTelemetry simply by upgrading their SDK version. The new SDK automatically routes your classic Application Insights Track* APIs calls through a new mapping layer that emits OpenTelemetry signals under the hood. Why This Matters By upgrading, you gain: ✔ Vendor‑neutral OpenTelemetry APIs going forward You can immediately begin writing new code using OpenTelemetry APIs, ensuring future portability and alignment with industry standards. ✔ Access to the full OpenTelemetry ecosystem You can now easily plug in community instrumentation libraries and exporters. For example, collecting Redis Cache dependency data—previously not supported with Application Insights 2.x—becomes straightforward. ✔ Multi‑exporter support Export to Azure Monitor and another system (e.g., a SIEM or backend of your choice) simultaneously if your scenario requires it. What Still Requires Attention: Initializers and Processors One area where automatic migration is not possible is telemetry processors and telemetry initializers. These Application Insights extensibility points were extremely flexible, allowing custom property injection, filtering, or deletion logic. OpenTelemetry supports similar behavior, but through more structured concepts such as span processors. See here for a full list of breaking changes. On a positive note, these OpenTelemetry components generally deliver better performance and clearer behavior. Our documentation assists with migration, and we plan to release an MCP with guardrails to assist LLM in accurate coding. Keeping the essence of Azure Monitor Application Insights While OpenTelemetry encourages the use of the OpenTelemetry-Collector, we remain committed to preserving the simplicity that customers love about Azure Monitor Application Insights. The Azure Monitor OpenTelemetry Distro is all that’s required to get started. It’s just a single NuGet package and you configure it with a Connection String. Telemetry flows in minutes. No Collector is required unless you explicitly want one. We are able to achieve this with extensive built‑in sampling to manage cost and a trace‑preservation algorithm, so you see complete traces. This keeps the “just works” spirit of Azure Monitor Application Insights intact, while aligning with OpenTelemetry standards. Feedback If you encounter issues during the upgrade, please open a support ticket—we want the migration to be smooth. If you’d like to share feedback or engage directly with the product team, email us at otel@microsoft.com. This is not an official support channel, but we read every email and appreciate hearing feedback directly from you!What’s new in Observability at Build 2025
At Build 2025, we are excited to announce new features in Azure Monitor designed to enhance observability for developers and SREs, making it easier for you to streamline troubleshooting, improve monitoring efficiency, and gain deeper insights into application performance. With our new AI-powered tools, customizable alerts, and advanced visualization capabilities, we’re empowering developers to deliver high-quality, resilient applications with greater operational efficiency. AI-Powered Troubleshooting Capabilities We are excited to disclose two new AI-powered features, as well as share an update to a GA feature, which enhance troubleshooting and monitoring: AI-powered investigations (Public Preview): Identifies possible explanations for service degradations via automated analyses, consolidating all observability-related data for faster problem mitigation. Attend our live demo at Build and learn more here. Health models (Public Preview – coming in June 2025): Significantly improves the efficiency of detecting business-impacting issues in workloads, empowering organizations to deliver applications with operational efficiency and resilience through a full-stack view of workload health. Attend our live demo at Build to get a preview of the experience and learn more here. AI-powered Application Insights Code Optimizations (GA): Provides code-level suggestions for running .NET apps on Azure. Now, it’s easier to get code-level suggestions with GitHub Copilot coding agent (preview) and GitHub Copilot for Azure in VS Code. Learn more here. Enhanced AI and agent observability Azure Monitor and Azure AI Foundry now jointly offer real-time monitoring and continuous evaluation of AI apps and agentic systems in production. These capabilities are deeply integrated with the Foundry Observability experience and allow you to track key metrics such as performance, quality, safety, and resource usage. Features include: Unified observability dashboard for generative AI apps and agents (Public Preview): Provides full-stack visibility of AI apps and infrastructure with AI app metrics surfaced in both Azure Monitor and Foundry Observability. Alerts: Data is published to Azure Monitor Application Insights, allowing users to set alerts and analyze them for troubleshooting. Debug with tracing capabilities: Enables detailed root-cause analysis of issues like groundedness regressions. Learn more in our breakout session at Build! Improved Visualization We have expanded our visualization capabilities, particularly for Kubernetes services: Azure Monitor dashboards with Grafana (Public Preview): Create and edit Grafana dashboards directly in the Azure Portal with no additional cost. This includes dashboards for Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) and other Azure resources. Learn more. Managed Prometheus Visualizations: Supports managed Prometheus visualizations for both AKS clusters (GA) and Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters (Public Preview), offering a more cost-efficient and performant solution. Learn more. Customized and Simplified Monitoring Through enhancements to alert customization, we’re making it easier for you to get started with monitoring: Prometheus community recommended alerts: Offers one-click enablement of Prometheus recommended alerts for AKS clusters (GA) and Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters (Public Preview), providing comprehensive alerting coverage across cluster, node, and pod levels. Simple log alerts (Public Preview): Designed to provide a simplified and more intuitive experience for monitoring and alerting, Simple log alerts evaluate each row individually, providing faster alerting compared to traditional log alerts. Simple log alerts support multiple log tiers, including Analytics and Basic Logs, which previously did not have any alerting solution. Learn more. Customizable email subjects for log search alerts (Public Preview): Allows customers to personalize the subject lines of alert emails including dynamic values, making it easier to quickly identify and respond to alerts. Send a custom event from the Azure Monitor OpenTelemetry Distro (GA): Offers developers a way to track user or system actions that matter the most to their business objectives, now available in the Azure Monitor OpenTelemetry Distro. Learn more. Application Insights auto-instrumentation for Java and Node Microservices on AKS (Public Preview): Easily monitor your Java and Node deployments without changing your code by leveraging auto-instrumentation that is integrated into the AKS cluster. These capabilities will help you easily assess the performance of your application and identify the cause of incidents efficiently. Learn more. Enhancements for Large Enterprises and Government Entities Azure Monitor Logs is introducing several new features aimed at supporting highly sensitive and high-volume logs, empowering large enterprises and government entities. With better data control and access, developers at these organizations can work better with IT Professionals to improve the reliability of their applications. Workspace replication (GA): Enhances resilience to regional incidents by enabling cross-regional workspace replication. Logs are ingested in both regions, ensuring continued observability through dashboards, alerts, and advanced solutions like Microsoft Sentinel. Granular RBAC (Public Preview): Supports granular role-based access control (RBAC) using Azure Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC). This allows organizations to have row-level control on which data is visible to specific users. Data deletion capability (GA): Allows customers to quickly mark unwanted log entries, such as sensitive or corrupt data, as deleted without physically removing them from storage. It’s useful for unplanned deletions using filters to target specific records, ensuring data integrity for analysis. Process more log records in the Azure Portal (GA): Supports up to 100,000 records per query in the Azure Portal, enabling deeper investigations and broader data analysis directly within the portal without need for additional tools. We’re proud to further Azure Monitor's commitment to providing comprehensive and efficient observability solutions for developers, SREs, and IT Professionals alike. For more information, chat with Observability experts through the following sessions at Build 2025: BRK168: AI and Agent Observability with Azure AI Foundry and Azure Monitor BRK188: Power your AI Apps Across Cloud and Edge with Azure Arc DEM547: Enable application monitoring and troubleshooting faster with Azure Monitor DEM537: Mastering Azure Monitor: Essential Tips in 15 Minutes Expo Hall (Meet the Experts): Azure Arc and Azure Monitor booth
