Performance monitoring with the Windows Azure Diagnostics extension
This document covers steps required to set up collection of performance counters via the Windows Azure Diagnostics (WAD) extension for Windows clusters. For Linux clusters, set up the Log Analytics agent to collect performance counters for your nodes.
Note
The WAD extension should be deployed on your cluster for these steps to work for you. If it is not set up, head over to Event aggregation and collection using Windows Azure Diagnostics.
Note
We recommend that you use the Azure Az PowerShell module to interact with Azure. To get started, see Install Azure PowerShell. To learn how to migrate to the Az PowerShell module, see Migrate Azure PowerShell from AzureRM to Az.
Collect performance counters via the WadCfg
To collect performance counters via WAD, you need to modify the configuration appropriately in your cluster's Resource Manager template. Follow these steps to add a performance counter you want to collect to your template and run a Resource Manager resource upgrade.
Find the WAD configuration in your cluster's template - find
WadCfg
. You'll add performance counters to collect under theDiagnosticMonitorConfiguration
.Set up your configuration to collect performance counters by adding the following section to your
DiagnosticMonitorConfiguration
."PerformanceCounters": { "scheduledTransferPeriod": "PT1M", "PerformanceCounterConfiguration": [] }
The
scheduledTransferPeriod
defines how frequently the values of the counters that are collected are transferred to your Azure storage table and to any configured sink.Add the performance counters you would like to collect to the
PerformanceCounterConfiguration
that was declared in the previous step. Each counter you would like to collect is defined with acounterSpecifier
,sampleRate
,unit
,annotation
, and any relevantsinks
.
Here's an example of a configuration with the counter for the Total Processor Time (the amount of time the CPU was in use for processing operations) and Service Fabric Actor Method Invocations per Second, one of the Service Fabric custom performance counters. Refer to Reliable Actor Performance Counters and Reliable Service Performance Counters for a full list of Service Fabric custom perf counters.
"WadCfg": {
"DiagnosticMonitorConfiguration": {
"overallQuotaInMB": "50000",
"EtwProviders": {
"EtwEventSourceProviderConfiguration": [
{
"provider": "Microsoft-ServiceFabric-Actors",
"scheduledTransferKeywordFilter": "1",
"scheduledTransferPeriod": "PT5M",
"DefaultEvents": {
"eventDestination": "ServiceFabricReliableActorEventTable"
}
},
{
"provider": "Microsoft-ServiceFabric-Services",
"scheduledTransferPeriod": "PT5M",
"DefaultEvents": {
"eventDestination": "ServiceFabricReliableServiceEventTable"
}
}
],
"EtwManifestProviderConfiguration": [
{
"provider": "cbd93bc2-71e5-4566-b3a7-595d8eeca6e8",
"scheduledTransferLogLevelFilter": "Information",
"scheduledTransferKeywordFilter": "4611686018427387904",
"scheduledTransferPeriod": "PT5M",
"DefaultEvents": {
"eventDestination": "ServiceFabricSystemEventTable"
}
}
]
},
"PerformanceCounters": {
"scheduledTransferPeriod": "PT1M",
"PerformanceCounterConfiguration": [
{
"counterSpecifier": "\\Processor(_Total)\\% Processor Time",
"sampleRate": "PT1M",
"unit": "Percent",
"annotation": [
],
"sinks": ""
},
{
"counterSpecifier": "\\Service Fabric Actor Method(*)\\Invocations/Sec",
"sampleRate": "PT1M",
}
]
}
}
},
The sample rate for the counter can be modified as per your needs. The format is PT<time><unit>
, so if you want the counter collected every second, then you should set the "sampleRate": "PT15S"
.
You can also use variables in your ARM template to collect an array of performance counters, which can come in handy when you collect performance counters per process. In the following example, we collect processor time and garbage collector time per process and then two performance counters on the nodes themselves all using variables.
"variables": {
"copy": [
{
"name": "processorTimeCounters",
"count": "[length(parameters('monitoredProcesses'))]",
"input": {
"counterSpecifier": "\\Process([parameters('monitoredProcesses')[copyIndex('processorTimeCounters')]])\\% Processor Time",
"sampleRate": "PT1M",
"unit": "Percent",
"sinks": "applicationInsights",
"annotation": [
{
"displayName": "[concat(parameters('monitoredProcesses')[copyIndex('processorTimeCounters')],' Processor Time')]",
"locale": "en-us"
}
]
}
},
{
"name": "gcTimeCounters",
"count": "[length(parameters('monitoredProcesses'))]",
"input": {
"counterSpecifier": "\\.NET CLR Memory([parameters('monitoredProcesses')[copyIndex('gcTimeCounters')]])\\% Time in GC",
"sampleRate": "PT1M",
"unit": "Percent",
"sinks": "applicationInsights",
"annotation": [
{
"displayName": "[concat(parameters('monitoredProcesses')[copyIndex('gcTimeCounters')],' Time in GC')]",
"locale": "en-us"
}
]
}
}
],
"machineCounters": [
{
"counterSpecifier": "\\Memory\\Available Bytes",
"sampleRate": "PT1M",
"unit": "KB",
"sinks": "applicationInsights",
"annotation": [
{
"displayName": "Memory Available Kb",
"locale": "en-us"
}
]
},
{
"counterSpecifier": "\\Memory\\% Committed Bytes In Use",
"sampleRate": "PT15S",
"unit": "percent",
"annotation": [
{
"displayName": "Memory usage",
"locale": "en-us"
}
]
}
]
}
....
"WadCfg": {
"DiagnosticMonitorConfiguration": {
"overallQuotaInMB": "50000",
"Metrics": {
"metricAggregation": [
{
"scheduledTransferPeriod": "PT1M"
}
],
"resourceId": "[resourceId('Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachineScaleSets', variables('vmNodeTypeApp2Name'))]"
},
"PerformanceCounters": {
"scheduledTransferPeriod": "PT1M",
"PerformanceCounterConfiguration": "[concat(variables ('processorTimeCounters'), variables('gcTimeCounters'), variables('machineCounters'))]"
},
....
Once you have added the appropriate performance counters that need to be collected, you need to upgrade your cluster resource so that these changes are reflected in your running cluster. Save your modified
template.json
and open up PowerShell. You can upgrade your cluster usingNew-AzResourceGroupDeployment
. The call requires the name of the resource group, the updated template file, and the parameters file, and prompts Resource Manager to make appropriate changes to the resources that you updated. Once you're signed into your account and are in the right subscription, use the following command to run the upgrade:New-AzResourceGroupDeployment -ResourceGroupName <ResourceGroup> -TemplateFile <PathToTemplateFile> -TemplateParameterFile <PathToParametersFile> -Verbose
Once the upgrade finishes rolling out (takes between 15-45 minutes depending on whether it's the first deployment and the size of your resource group), WAD should be collecting the performance counters and sending them to the table named WADPerformanceCountersTable in the storage account associated with your cluster. See your performance counters in Application Insights by adding the AI Sink to the Resource Manager template.
Next steps
- Collect more performance counters for your cluster. See Performance metrics for a list of counters you should collect.
- Use monitoring and diagnostics with a Windows VM and Azure Resource Manager templates to make further modifications to your
WadCfg
, including configuring more storage accounts to send diagnostics data to. - Visit the WadCfg builder to build a template from scratch and make sure your syntax is correct to build a template from scratch and make sure your syntax is correct.