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Monitor Azure HDInsight

  • Article

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.

HDInsight monitoring options

The specific metrics and logs available for your HDInsight cluster depend on your cluster type and tools. Azure HDInsight offers Apache Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, HBase, and Interactive Query cluster types. You can monitor your cluster through the Apache Ambari web UI or in the Azure portal by enabling Azure Monitor integration.

Apache Ambari monitoring

Apache Ambari simplifies the management, configuration, and monitoring of HDInsight clusters by providing a web UI and a REST API. Ambari is included on all Linux-based HDInsight clusters. To use Ambari, select Ambari home on your HDInsight cluster's Overview page in the Azure portal.

For information about how to use Ambari for monitoring, see the following articles:

Azure Monitor integration

You can also monitor your HDInsight clusters directly in Azure. A new Azure Monitor integration, now in preview, lets you access Insights, Logs, and Workbooks from your HDInsight cluster without needing to invoke the Log Analytics workspace.

To use the new Azure Monitor integration, enable it by selecting Monitor integration from the Monitoring section in the left menu of your HDInsight Azure portal page. You can also use PowerShell or Azure CLI to enable and interact with the new monitoring integration. For more information, see the following articles:

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.

Insights cluster portal integration

After enabling Azure Monitor integration, you can select Insights (Preview) in the left menu of your HDInsight Azure portal page to see an out-of-box, automatically populated logs and metrics visualization dashboard specific to your cluster's type. The insights dashboard uses a prebuilt Azure Workbook that has sections for each cluster type, YARN, system metrics, and component logs.

Screenshot that shows the visualization dashboard.

These detailed graphs and visualizations give you deep insights into your cluster's performance and health. For more information, see Use HDInsight out-of-box Insights to monitor a single cluster.

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 HDInsight, see HDInsight 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.

HDInsight stores its log files both in the cluster file system and in Azure Storage. Due to the large number and size of log files, it's important to optimize log storage and archiving to help with cost management. For more information, see Manage logs for an HDInsight cluster.

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 metrics automatically collected for HDInsight, see HDInsight monitoring data reference.

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.

Agent-collected logs

HDInsight doesn't produce resource logs by the usual method. Instead, it collects logs from inside the HDInsight cluster and sends them to Azure Monitor Logs / Log Analytics tables using the Log Analytics Agent.

An HDInsight cluster produces many log files, such as:

  • Job execution logs
  • YARN log Resource Manager files
  • Script action logs
  • Ambari cluster alerts status
  • Ambari system metrics
  • Security logs
  • Hadoop activity logged to the controller, stderr, and syslog log files

The specific logs available depend on your cluster framework and tools. Once you enable Azure Monitor integration for your cluster, you can view and query on any of these logs.

Selective logging

HDInsight clusters can collect many verbose logs. To help save on monitoring and storage costs, you can enable the selective logging feature by using script actions for HDInsight in the Azure portal. Selective logging lets you turn on and off different logs and metric sources available through Log Analytics. With this feature, you only have to pay for what you use.

You can configure log collection and analysis to enable or disable tables in the Log Analytics workspace and adjust the source type for each table. For detailed instructions, see Use selective logging with a script action in Azure HDInsight.

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.

Analyze monitoring data

There are many tools for analyzing monitoring data.

Azure Monitor tools

Azure Monitor supports the following basic tools:

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 Logs collects data from your HDInsight cluster resources and from other monitoring tools, and uses the data to provide analysis across multiple sources.

Azure Monitor export tools

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

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

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.

After you enable Azure Monitor integration, you can select Logs (preview) in the left navigation for your HDInsight portal page, and then select the Queries tab to see example queries for your cluster. For example, the following query lists all known computers that didn't send a heartbeat in the past five hours.

// Unavailable computers 
Heartbeat
| summarize LastHeartbeat=max(TimeGenerated) by Computer
| where LastHeartbeat < ago(5h)

The following query gets the top 10 resource intensive queries, based on CPU consumption, in the past 24 hours.

// Top 10 resource intensive queries 
LAQueryLogs
| top 10 by StatsCPUTimeMs desc nulls last

Important

The new Azure Monitor integration implements new tables in the Log Analytics workspace. To remove as much ambiguity as possible, there are fewer schemas, and the schema formatting is better organized and easier to understand.

The new monitoring integration in the Azure portal uses the new tables, but you must rework older queries and dashboards to use the new tables. For the log table mappings from the classic Azure Monitor integration to the new tables, see Log table mapping.

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.

HDInsight alert rules

After you enable Azure Monitor integration, you can select Alerts in the left navigation for your HDInsight portal page, and then select Create alert rule to configure alerts. You can base an alert on any Log Analytics query, or use signals from metrics or the activity log.

The following table describes a couple of alert rules for HDInsight. These alerts are just examples. You can set alerts for any metric, log entry, or activity log entry listed in the HDInsight monitoring data reference.

Alert type Condition Description
Metric Pending CPU Whenever the maximum pending CPU is greater or less than dynamic threshold
Activity log Delete cluster Whenever the Activity Log has an event with Category='Administrative', Signal name='Delete Cluster (HDInsight Cluster)'

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.

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