Monitor Azure Functions

This article describes:

• The types of monitoring data you can collect for this service.
• Ways to analyze that data.

Note

If you're already familiar with this service and/or Azure Monitor and just want to know how to analyze monitoring data, see the Analyze section near the end of this article.

When you have critical applications and business processes that rely on Azure resources, you need to monitor and get alerts for your system. The Azure Monitor service collects and aggregates metrics and logs from every component of your system. Azure Monitor provides you with a view of availability, performance, and resilience, and notifies you of issues. You can use the Azure portal, PowerShell, Azure CLI, REST API, or client libraries to set up and view monitoring data.

• For more information on Azure Monitor, see the Azure Monitor overview.
• For more information on how to monitor Azure resources in general, see Monitor Azure resources with Azure Monitor.

Insights

Some services in Azure have a built-in monitoring dashboard in the Azure portal that provides a starting point for monitoring your service. These dashboards are called insights, and you can find them in the Insights Hub of Azure Monitor in the Azure portal.

Application Insights

Azure Functions offers built-in integration with Application Insights to monitor functions executions. For detailed information about how to integrate, configure, and use Application Insights to monitor Azure Functions, see the following articles:

• Monitor executions in Azure Functions
• How to configure monitoring for Azure Functions
• Analyze Azure Functions telemetry in Application Insights.
• Monitor Azure Functions with Application Insights

Resource types

Azure uses the concept of resource types and IDs to identify everything in a subscription. Azure Monitor similarly organizes core monitoring data into metrics and logs based on resource types, also called namespaces. Different metrics and logs are available for different resource types. Your service might be associated with more than one resource type.

Resource types are also part of the resource IDs for every resource running in Azure. For example, one resource type for a virtual machine is Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines. For a list of services and their associated resource types, see Resource providers.

For more information about the resource types for Azure Functions, see Azure Functions monitoring data reference.

Data storage

For Azure Monitor:

• Metrics data is stored in the Azure Monitor metrics database.
• Log data is stored in the Azure Monitor logs store. Log Analytics is a tool in the Azure portal that can query this store.
• The Azure activity log is a separate store with its own interface in the Azure portal.

You can optionally route metric and activity log data to the Azure Monitor logs store. You can then use Log Analytics to query the data and correlate it with other log data.

Many services can use diagnostic settings to send metric and log data to other storage locations outside Azure Monitor. Examples include Azure Storage, hosted partner systems, and non-Azure partner systems, by using Event Hubs.

For detailed information on how Azure Monitor stores data, see Azure Monitor data platform.

Azure Monitor platform metrics

Azure Monitor provides platform metrics for most services. These metrics are:

• Individually defined for each namespace.
• Stored in the Azure Monitor time-series metrics database.
• Lightweight and capable of supporting near real-time alerting.
• Used to track the performance of a resource over time.

Collection: Azure Monitor collects platform metrics automatically. No configuration is required.

Routing: You can also usually route platform metrics to Azure Monitor Logs / Log Analytics so you can query them with other log data. For more information, see the Metrics diagnostic setting. For how to configure diagnostic settings for a service, see Create diagnostic settings in Azure Monitor.

For a list of all metrics it's possible to gather for all resources in Azure Monitor, see Supported metrics in Azure Monitor.

For a list of available metrics for Azure Functions, see Azure Functions monitoring data reference.

Note

App Service metrics (Microsoft.Web/sites) aren't available when your function app runs on Linux in a Consumption plan.

Azure Monitor resource logs

Resource logs provide insight into operations that were done by an Azure resource. Logs are generated automatically, but you must route them to Azure Monitor logs to save or query them. Logs are organized in categories. A given namespace might have multiple resource log categories.

Collection: Resource logs aren't collected and stored until you create a diagnostic setting and route the logs to one or more locations. When you create a diagnostic setting, you specify which categories of logs to collect. There are multiple ways to create and maintain diagnostic settings, including the Azure portal, programmatically, and though Azure Policy.

Routing: The suggested default is to route resource logs to Azure Monitor Logs so you can query them with other log data. Other locations such as Azure Storage, Azure Event Hubs, and certain Microsoft monitoring partners are also available. For more information, see Azure resource logs and Resource log destinations.

For detailed information about collecting, storing, and routing resource logs, see Diagnostic settings in Azure Monitor.

For a list of all available resource log categories in Azure Monitor, see Supported resource logs in Azure Monitor.

All resource logs in Azure Monitor have the same header fields, followed by service-specific fields. The common schema is outlined in Azure Monitor resource log schema.

Azure Functions integrates with Azure Monitor Logs to monitor functions. For detailed instructions on how to set up diagnostic settings to configure and route resource logs, see Create diagnostic settings in Azure Monitor.

For the available resource log categories, their associated Log Analytics tables, and the logs schemas for Azure Functions, see Azure Functions monitoring data reference.

Azure activity log

The activity log contains subscription-level events that track operations for each Azure resource as seen from outside that resource; for example, creating a new resource or starting a virtual machine.

Collection: Activity log events are automatically generated and collected in a separate store for viewing in the Azure portal.

Routing: You can send activity log data to Azure Monitor Logs so you can analyze it alongside other log data. Other locations such as Azure Storage, Azure Event Hubs, and certain Microsoft monitoring partners are also available. For more information on how to route the activity log, see Overview of the Azure activity log.

Other logs

Azure Functions also offers the ability to collect more than Azure Monitor resource logs. To view a near real time stream of application log files generated by your function running in Azure, you can connect to Application Insights and use Live Metrics Stream. Or, you can use the App Service platform built-in log streaming to view a stream of application log files. For more information, see Enable streaming execution logs in Azure Functions.

Analyze monitoring data

There are many tools for analyzing monitoring data.

Azure Monitor tools

Azure Monitor supports the following basic tools:

• Metrics explorer, a tool in the Azure portal that allows you to view and analyze metrics for Azure resources. For more information, see Analyze metrics with Azure Monitor metrics explorer.

• Log Analytics, a tool in the Azure portal that allows you to query and analyze log data by using the Kusto query language (KQL). For more information, see Get started with log queries in Azure Monitor.

• The activity log, which has a user interface in the Azure portal for viewing and basic searches. To do more in-depth analysis, you have to route the data to Azure Monitor logs and run more complex queries in Log Analytics.

Tools that allow more complex visualization include:

• Dashboards that let you combine different kinds of data into a single pane in the Azure portal.
• Workbooks, customizable reports that you can create in the Azure portal. Workbooks can include text, metrics, and log queries.
• Grafana, an open platform tool that excels in operational dashboards. You can use Grafana to create dashboards that include data from multiple sources other than Azure Monitor.
• Power BI, a business analytics service that provides interactive visualizations across various data sources. You can configure Power BI to automatically import log data from Azure Monitor to take advantage of these visualizations.

Azure Monitor export tools

You can get data out of Azure Monitor into other tools by using the following methods:

• Metrics: Use the REST API for metrics to extract metric data from the Azure Monitor metrics database. The API supports filter expressions to refine the data retrieved. For more information, see Azure Monitor REST API reference.

• Logs: Use the REST API or the associated client libraries.

• Another option is the workspace data export.

To get started with the REST API for Azure Monitor, see Azure monitoring REST API walkthrough.

Analyze metrics for Azure Functions

The following examples use Azure Monitor metrics to help estimate the cost of running your function app on a Consumption plan. To learn more about estimating Consumption plan costs, see Estimating Consumption plan costs.

Portal

Use Azure Monitor metrics explorer to view cost-related data for your Consumption plan function apps in a graphical format.

1. In the Azure portal, navigate to your function app.

2. In the left panel, scroll down to Monitoring and choose Metrics.

3. From Metric, choose Function Execution Count and Sum for Aggregation. This adds the sum of the execution counts during chosen period to the chart.

   

4. Select Add metric and repeat steps 2-4 to add Function Execution Units to the chart.

The resulting chart contains the totals for both execution metrics in the chosen time range, which in this case is two hours.

As the number of execution units is so much greater than the execution count, the chart just shows execution units.

This chart shows a total of 1.11 billion Function Execution Units consumed in a two-hour period, measured in MB-milliseconds. To convert to GB-seconds, divide by 1024000. In this example, the function app consumed 1110000000 / 1024000 = 1083.98 GB-seconds. You can take this value and multiply by the current price of execution time on the Functions pricing page, which gives you the cost of these two hours, assuming you've already used any free grants of execution time.

Azure CLI

The Azure CLI has commands for retrieving metrics. You can use the CLI from a local command environment or directly from the portal using Azure Cloud Shell. For example, the following az monitor metrics list command returns hourly data over same time period used before.

Make sure to replace <AZURE_SUBSCRIPTON_ID> with your Azure subscription ID running the command.

az monitor metrics list --resource /subscriptions/<AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID>/resourceGroups/metrics-testing-consumption/providers/Microsoft.Web/sites/metrics-testing-consumption --metric FunctionExecutionUnits,FunctionExecutionCount --aggregation Total --interval PT1H --start-time 2019-09-11T21:46:00Z --end-time 2019-09-11T23:18:00Z

This command returns a JSON payload that looks like the following example:

{
  "cost": 0.0,
  "interval": "1:00:00",
  "namespace": "Microsoft.Web/sites",
  "resourceregion": "centralus",
  "timespan": "2019-09-11T21:46:00Z/2019-09-11T23:18:00Z",
  "value": [
    {
      "id": "/subscriptions/XXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXX/resourceGroups/metrics-testing-consumption/providers/Microsoft.Web/sites/metrics-testing-consumption/providers/Microsoft.Insights/metrics/FunctionExecutionUnits",
      "name": {
        "localizedValue": "Function Execution Units",
        "value": "FunctionExecutionUnits"
      },
      "resourceGroup": "metrics-testing-consumption",
      "timeseries": [
        {
          "data": [
            {
              "average": null,
              "count": null,
              "maximum": null,
              "minimum": null,
              "timeStamp": "2019-09-11T21:46:00+00:00",
              "total": 793294592.0
            },
            {
              "average": null,
              "count": null,
              "maximum": null,
              "minimum": null,
              "timeStamp": "2019-09-11T22:46:00+00:00",
              "total": 316576256.0
            }
          ],
          "metadatavalues": []
        }
      ],
      "type": "Microsoft.Insights/metrics",
      "unit": "Count"
    },
    {
      "id": "/subscriptions/XXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXX/resourceGroups/metrics-testing-consumption/providers/Microsoft.Web/sites/metrics-testing-consumption/providers/Microsoft.Insights/metrics/FunctionExecutionCount",
      "name": {
        "localizedValue": "Function Execution Count",
        "value": "FunctionExecutionCount"
      },
      "resourceGroup": "metrics-testing-consumption",
      "timeseries": [
        {
          "data": [
            {
              "average": null,
              "count": null,
              "maximum": null,
              "minimum": null,
              "timeStamp": "2019-09-11T21:46:00+00:00",
              "total": 33538.0
            },
            {
              "average": null,
              "count": null,
              "maximum": null,
              "minimum": null,
              "timeStamp": "2019-09-11T22:46:00+00:00",
              "total": 13040.0
            }
          ],
          "metadatavalues": []
        }
      ],
      "type": "Microsoft.Insights/metrics",
      "unit": "Count"
    }
  ]
}

This particular response shows that from 2019-09-11T21:46 to 2019-09-11T23:18, the app consumed 1110000000 MB-milliseconds (1083.98 GB-seconds).

Azure PowerShell

The Azure PowerShell has commands for retrieving metrics. You can use the Azure PowerShell from a local command environment or directly from the portal using Azure Cloud Shell. For example, the following Get-AzMetric command returns hourly data over same time period used before.

Make sure to replace <AZURE_SUBSCRIPTON_ID> with your Azure subscription ID running the command.

Get-AzMetric -ResourceId /subscriptions/<AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID>/resourceGroups/metrics-testing-consumption/providers/Microsoft.Web/sites/metrics-testing-consumption -MetricName  FunctionExecutionUnits,FunctionExecutionCount -AggregationType Total -TimeGrain 01:00:00 -StartTime 2019-09-11T21:46:00Z -EndTime 2019-09-11T23:18:00Z

This command returns an output that looks like the following example:

Id         : /subscriptions/<AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID>/resourceGroups/metrics-testing-consumption/providers/Microsoft.Web/sites/metrics-testing-consumption/providers/Microsoft.Insights/metrics/FunctionExecutionUnits
Name       : 
                LocalizedValue : Function Execution Units
                Value          : FunctionExecutionUnits
             
Type       : Microsoft.Insights/metrics
Unit       : Count
Data       : {Microsoft.Azure.Commands.Insights.OutputClasses.PSMetricValue, 
             Microsoft.Azure.Commands.Insights.OutputClasses.PSMetricValue, 
             Microsoft.Azure.Commands.Insights.OutputClasses.PSMetricValue, 
             Microsoft.Azure.Commands.Insights.OutputClasses.PSMetricValue…}
Timeseries : {Microsoft.Azure.Management.Monitor.Models.TimeSeriesElement}

Id         : /subscriptions/<AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID>/resourceGroups/metrics-testing-consumption/providers/Microsoft.Web/sites/metrics-testing-consumption/providers/Microsoft.Insights/metrics/FunctionExecutionCount
Name       : 
                LocalizedValue : Function Execution Count
                Value          : FunctionExecutionCount
             
Type       : Microsoft.Insights/metrics
Unit       : Count
Data       : {Microsoft.Azure.Commands.Insights.OutputClasses.PSMetricValue, 
             Microsoft.Azure.Commands.Insights.OutputClasses.PSMetricValue, 
             Microsoft.Azure.Commands.Insights.OutputClasses.PSMetricValue, 
             Microsoft.Azure.Commands.Insights.OutputClasses.PSMetricValue…}
Timeseries : {Microsoft.Azure.Management.Monitor.Models.TimeSeriesElement}

The Data property contains the actual metric values.

Analyze logs for Azure Functions

Azure Functions writes all logs to the FunctionAppLogs table under LogManagement in the Log Analytics workspace where you send the data. You can use Kusto queries to query the data.

Kusto queries

You can analyze monitoring data in the Azure Monitor Logs / Log Analytics store by using the Kusto query language (KQL).

Important

When you select Logs from the service's menu in the portal, Log Analytics opens with the query scope set to the current service. This scope means that log queries will only include data from that type of resource. If you want to run a query that includes data from other Azure services, select Logs from the Azure Monitor menu. See Log query scope and time range in Azure Monitor Log Analytics for details.

For a list of common queries for any service, see the Log Analytics queries interface.

The following sample queries can help you monitor all your functions app logs:

FunctionAppLogs
| order by TimeGenerated desc

FunctionAppLogs
| project TimeGenerated, HostInstanceId, Message, _ResourceId
| order by TimeGenerated desc

The following sample query can help you monitor a specific functions app's logs:

FunctionAppLogs
| where FunctionName == "<Function name>" 
| order by TimeGenerated desc

The following sample query can help you monitor exceptions on all your functions app logs:

FunctionAppLogs
| where ExceptionDetails != ""  
| order by TimeGenerated asc

The following sample query can help you monitor exceptions on a specific functions app's logs:

FunctionAppLogs
| where ExceptionDetails != ""  
| where FunctionName == "<Function name>" 
| order by TimeGenerated desc

Alerts

Azure Monitor alerts proactively notify you when specific conditions are found in your monitoring data. Alerts allow you to identify and address issues in your system before your customers notice them. For more information, see Azure Monitor alerts.

There are many sources of common alerts for Azure resources. For examples of common alerts for Azure resources, see Sample log alert queries. The Azure Monitor Baseline Alerts (AMBA) site provides a semi-automated method of implementing important platform metric alerts, dashboards, and guidelines. The site applies to a continually expanding subset of Azure services, including all services that are part of the Azure Landing Zone (ALZ).

The common alert schema standardizes the consumption of Azure Monitor alert notifications. For more information, see Common alert schema.

Types of alerts

You can alert on any metric or log data source in the Azure Monitor data platform. There are many different types of alerts depending on the services you're monitoring and the monitoring data you're collecting. Different types of alerts have various benefits and drawbacks. For more information, see Choose the right monitoring alert type.

The following list describes the types of Azure Monitor alerts you can create:

• Metric alerts evaluate resource metrics at regular intervals. Metrics can be platform metrics, custom metrics, logs from Azure Monitor converted to metrics, or Application Insights metrics. Metric alerts can also apply multiple conditions and dynamic thresholds.
• Log alerts allow users to use a Log Analytics query to evaluate resource logs at a predefined frequency.
• Activity log alerts trigger when a new activity log event occurs that matches defined conditions. Resource Health alerts and Service Health alerts are activity log alerts that report on your service and resource health.

Some Azure services also support smart detection alerts, Prometheus alerts, or recommended alert rules.

For some services, you can monitor at scale by applying the same metric alert rule to multiple resources of the same type that exist in the same Azure region. Individual notifications are sent for each monitored resource. For supported Azure services and clouds, see Monitor multiple resources with one alert rule.

Note

If you're creating or running an application that runs on your service, Azure Monitor application insights might offer more types of alerts.

Azure Functions alert rules

The following table lists common and recommended alert rules for Azure Functions. These are just recommended alerts. You can set alerts for any metric, log entry, or activity log entry listed in the Monitoring data reference for Azure Functions.

Alert type	Condition	Description
Metric	Average connections	When number of connections exceed a set value
Metric	HTTP 404	When HTTP 404 responses exceed a set value
Metric	HTTP Server Errors	When HTTP 5xx errors exceed a set value
Activity Log	Create or update function app	When app is created or updated
Activity Log	Delete function app	When app is deleted
Activity Log	Restart function app	When app is restarted
Activity Log	Stop function app	When app is stopped

Advisor recommendations

For some services, if critical conditions or imminent changes occur during resource operations, an alert displays on the service Overview page in the portal. You can find more information and recommended fixes for the alert in Advisor recommendations under Monitoring in the left menu. During normal operations, no advisor recommendations display.

For more information on Azure Advisor, see Azure Advisor overview.

Related content

For more information about monitoring Azure Functions, see the following articles:

• Azure Functions monitoring data reference provides a reference of the metrics, logs, and other important values available for your function app.
• Monitor Azure resources with Azure Monitor gives general details about monitoring Azure resources.
• Monitor executions in Azure Functions details how to monitor a function app.
• How to configure monitoring for Azure Functions describes how to configure monitoring.
• Analyze Azure Functions telemetry in Application Insights describes how to view and query the data being collected from a function app.