Advanced platform metrics for Azure Blob Storage (preview)

Important

Advanced platform metrics for Azure Blob Storage is currently in preview. See the Supplemental Terms of Use for Microsoft Azure Previews for legal terms that apply to Azure features that are in beta, preview, or otherwise not yet released into general availability.

Advanced platform metrics provides container-level capacity insights for Azure Blob Storage. This feature extends Azure Monitor's platform metrics to include per-container storage size and object count, helping you optimize performance, manage costs, and support operational planning.

About advanced platform metrics

Advanced platform metrics provides deeper visibility into Azure Storage by adding granular telemetry beyond standard account-level metrics. By using advanced platform metrics, you get container-level capacity metrics, including per-container storage size and object count.

These insights help you:

• Optimize performance by understanding storage distribution across containers.
• Manage costs by identifying containers that consume the most capacity.
• Support operational planning with detailed capacity data at the container level.

Once you enable advanced platform metrics, you consume the metrics the same way you do with existing Azure platform metrics. Querying, dashboarding, and alerting work just like platform metrics today.

Available metrics

The following container-level metrics are available with advanced platform metrics:

Metric	Description	Unit
Container Blob Capacity	The amount of storage used by a container.	Bytes
Container Blob Count	The number of blob objects in a container.	Count

Both metrics support the ContainerName dimension, which you use to split and filter results by individual containers.

Prerequisites

• An Azure subscription. If you don't have one, create a free account.

• An Azure Storage account with Blob Storage. If you need to create one, see Create a storage account.

• PowerShell 5.1 or later, or Azure CLI installed.

• Install the Az.Storage preview PowerShell module (with admin privileges):

  1. Install the latest PowerShellGet:

     Install-Module PowerShellGet -Repository PSGallery -Force
     

  2. Close and reopen the PowerShell console.

  3. Install Az.Storage preview module:

     Install-Module Az.Storage -Repository PsGallery -RequiredVersion 9.6.3-preview -AllowClobber -AllowPrerelease -Force
     

Enable advanced platform metrics

To use advanced platform metrics, create a rule on your storage account. Rules define which containers emit capacity metrics.

Note

Depending on the size of the storage account, it can take up to six hours for changes to container level capacity metric settings to be reflected. This delay includes enabling, updating, and disabling these metrics.

PowerShell

Authenticate

Connect-AzAccount

Create a rule for all containers

To enable container-level capacity metrics for all containers in a storage account, run the following command:

Set-AzStorageAdvancedPlatformMetric `
  -ResourceGroupName <resource-group-name> `
  -AccountName <storage-account-name> `
  -RuleConfigFilterType AllContainersFilter `
  -Enabled

Create a rule for specific containers

To enable metrics only for specific containers, use the ContainerListFilter filter type:

Set-AzStorageAdvancedPlatformMetric `
  -ResourceGroupName <resource-group-name> `
  -AccountName <storage-account-name> `
  -RuleConfigFilterType ContainerListFilter `
  -RuleConfigFilterValue "container1","container2" `
  -Enabled

Create a rule by container prefix

To enable metrics for containers that match a prefix, use the ContainerPrefixFilter filter type:

Set-AzStorageAdvancedPlatformMetric `
  -ResourceGroupName <resource-group-name> `
  -AccountName <storage-account-name> `
  -RuleConfigFilterType ContainerPrefixFilter `
  -RuleConfigFilterValue "logs-","data-" `
  -Enabled

Azure CLI

Create a rule for all containers

To enable container-level capacity metrics for all containers in a storage account, run the following command:

az storage advanced-platform-metric create \
  -g <resource_group_name> \
  --account-name <storage_account_name> \
  --enabled \
  --rule-config-filter-type AllContainersFilter

Create a rule for specific containers

To enable metrics only for specific containers, use the ContainerListFilter filter type:

az storage advanced-platform-metric create \
  -g <resource_group_name> \
  --account-name <storage_account_name> \
  --enabled \
  --rule-config-filter-type ContainerListFilter \
  --rule-config-filter-values container1 container2

Create a rule by container prefix

To enable metrics for containers that match a prefix, use the ContainerPrefixFilter filter type:

az storage advanced-platform-metric create \
  -g <resource_group_name> \
  --account-name <storage_account_name> \
  --enabled \
  --rule-config-filter-type ContainerPrefixFilter \
  --rule-config-filter-values "logs-" "data-"

Portal

Portal support for creating advanced platform metrics rules isn't yet available. Use PowerShell to create and manage advanced platform metrics rules.

View and manage advanced platform metrics rules

After you create a rule, you can view and update rules for a storage account.

View enabled rules

PowerShell

Get-AzStorageAdvancedPlatformMetric `
  -ResourceGroupName <resource-group-name> `
  -AccountName <storage-account-name>

Azure CLI

az storage advanced-platform-metric list \
  -g <resource_group_name> \
  --account-name <storage_account_name> 

Portal

Portal support for viewing advanced platform metrics rules isn't yet available. Use PowerShell to view advanced platform metrics rules.

Update an existing rule

You can update a rule to change the filter type, filter values, or enabled state. For example, to change to a container list filter and disable the rule:

PowerShell

Set-AzStorageAdvancedPlatformMetric `
  -ResourceGroupName <resource-group-name> `
  -AccountName <storage-account-name> `
  -RuleConfigFilterType ContainerListFilter `
  -RuleConfigFilterValue "container1","container2" `
  -Enabled:$false

Azure CLI

az storage advanced-platform-metric update \
  -g <resource_group_name> \
  --account-name <storage_account_name> \
  --enabled false \
  --rule-config-filter-type ContainerPrefixFilter \
  --rule-config-filter-values container1 container2

Portal

Portal support for updating advanced platform metrics rules isn't yet available. Use PowerShell to update advanced platform metrics rules.

View advanced platform metrics

Note

If no metrics appear, make sure the Microsoft.Insights resource provider is registered on your subscription. To register it, run az provider register -n Microsoft.Insights by using Azure CLI.

PowerShell

To query container-level capacity metrics by using PowerShell, use the Get-AzMetric cmdlet:

$resourceId = "/subscriptions/<subscription-id>/resourceGroups/<resource-group-name>/providers/Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/<storage-account-name>"

Get-AzMetric -ResourceId $resourceId `
  -MetricName "ContainerUsedSize" `
  -TimeGrain 01:00:00 `
  -AggregationType Average

Azure CLI

To query container-level capacity metrics by using Azure CLI, run:

Container used size:

az monitor metrics list \
  --resource /subscriptions/<subscription-id>/resourceGroups/<resource-group-name>/providers/Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/<storage-account-name> \
  --metric ContainerUsedSize \
  --dimension ContainerName \
  --interval PT1H \
  -o table

Container blob count:

az monitor metrics list \
  --resource /subscriptions/<subscription-id>/resourceGroups/<resource-group-name>/providers/Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/<storage-account-name> \
  --metric ContainerBlobCount \
  --dimension ContainerName \
  --interval PT1H \
  -o table

Portal

To view advanced platform metrics in the Azure portal:

1. Go to your Storage Account in the Azure portal.

2. Under Monitoring, select Metrics.

3. Select one of the following metrics:

   • Container Blob Capacity
   • Container Blob Count

   

4. Select Apply splitting, and then choose ContainerName to view per-container graphs.

   

The following screenshot shows a metrics chart displaying container-level capacity data for two containers.

Pricing

Azure Monitor bills advanced platform metrics as advanced platform metrics. For pricing details, see the metrics section of Azure Monitor pricing.

Data points calculation example

Container-level capacity metrics expose data points for each container and access tier combination. Multiple dimensions per hour contribute to the total billable data points.

For example, consider a storage account with the following configuration:

• Blob access tiers: 5 (Hot, Cool, Cold, Smart, Archive)
• Blob types: 2 (Block blob, Append blob)
• Data points per container per hour: 5 tiers × 2 types = 10 data points
• Metrics enabled: 2 (Container Blob Capacity and Container Blob Count)
• Total data points per container per hour: 2 metrics × 10 = 20 data points

If you have 50 containers in your storage account:

• Data points per hour: 50 containers × 20 = 1,000 data points
• Data points per day: 1,000 × 24 hours = 24,000 data points
• Data points per month (30 days): 24,000 × 30 = 720,000 billable data points

The actual number of data points depends on your specific configuration, including the number of containers, enabled metrics, and the blob types and access tiers in use.

Limits and considerations

The following limit applies when using advanced platform metrics:

Limit	Value
Maximum containers per storage account	10,000

Related content

• Monitor Azure Blob Storage
• Azure Blob Storage monitoring data reference
• Best practices for monitoring Azure Blob Storage