Monitoring Azure Arc-Enabled Windows with VM Insights

Introduction

Building on our previous guide on securing your cloud environment with Microsoft Defender for Cloud, we'll now focus on enhancing visibility into your Azure Arc-enabled Windows servers using Azure Monitor.

In this post, we'll set up VM Insights to collect and analyze performance data for your servers.

Prerequisites:

• An Azure account with an active subscription.
• A Windows VM enabled with Azure Arc.

Creating a Log Analytics Workspace

1. Navigate to the Azure portal and search for "Log Analytics Workspaces."

   

2. Click + Create to create a new workspace.

   

3. Provide a name, select your subscription and resource group, and then click Review + Create.

   

Enabling VM Insights

1. Search for "Azure Arc" in the Azure portal and navigate to Machines.

   

2. Select your target Windows server and go to the Monitoring section and click Insights.

   

3. Click on Enable.

   

4. Choose your subscription and click Create new for the data collection rule.

   

5. Give the data collection rule a name, enable process and dependencies mapping, select your Log Analytics workspace, and click Create.

   

Exploring Performance Data

While data collection takes a few minutes, you can navigate to the Arc Lab Insights page for your machine and select the Performance tab.

This page provides server properties and summarizes event types and their counts.

Conclusion:
Congratulations! You've successfully set up monitoring for your Azure Arc-enabled Windows server.

Next Steps:
In the next guide, we'll explore how to manage updates for your Azure Arc-enabled Windows servers using Azure Update Manager.