Monitoring AKS Clusters

Azure Compute Solutions

Florin Angelescu

Azure Cloud Architect

Why monitoring matters

Kubernetes

Monitoring is essential for understanding how applications behave in production.
Issues can go unnoticed until users are impacted.

Why monitoring matters

Kubernetes

Kubernetes provides basic metrics.
AKS integrates with Azure Monitor and Log Analytics.
Monitoring helps:
- Detect problems early
- Optimize resource usage
- Applications meet performance expectations
Supports compliance reporting.

Metrics and dashboards

Kubernetes

Metrics are the foundation of monitoring.
AKS exposes CPU, memory, and network usage for pods and nodes.

Metrics and dashboards

Kubernetes

Azure Monitor

Collects these metrics.
Presents them in dashboards.
Makes trends easy to visualize.

Metrics and dashboards

Kubernetes

Custom dashboards can combine:

Infrastructure metrics
Application-level data (request latency, error counts)

By tailoring dashboards to team needs, you ensure that monitoring delivers actionable insights rather than overwhelming detail.

Logs and diagnostics

Kubernetes

Logs

Provide detailed information about application behavior.
Stream logs directly from pods using kubectl logs.
Centralize logs with Log Analytics.

Logs and diagnostics

Kubernetes

Diagnostics tools help identify root causes:
- Failing container
- Mis-configured service
- Resource bottleneck
Structured logging formats (JSON):
- Easier to parse and analyze logs automatically

Alerts and automation

Alerts

Azure Monitor allows you to set thresholds for metrics and trigger alerts when they are exceeded.

Alerts and automation

Alerts

CPU usage stays above 80% for several minutes:

An alert can notify the operations team

Alerts and automation

Alerts

Alerts can also trigger automated actions, such as scaling workloads or restarting pods.

Alerts and automation

Alerts

Combining alerts with automation:

Reduce manual intervention
Shorten recovery times

Best practices for monitoring

Metrics

Collect metrics that reflect system health and user experience

Dashboards

Focus on actionable insights

Logs

Use log aggregation to simplify troubleshooting

Monitor

Review and refine monitoring rules

Recap

Kubernetes

Monitoring in AKS provides the visibility needed to operate applications confidently.
With metrics, logs, dashboards, and alerts you can:
- Detect issues early
- Optimize performance
- Maintain reliability

Let's practice!

Azure Compute Solutions