Monitor Azure ExpressRoute

This article describes:

• The types of monitoring data you can collect for this service.
• How to analyze that data.

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.

• For more information on Azure Monitor, see the Azure Monitor overview.
• For more information on how to monitor Azure resources in general, see Monitor Azure resources with Azure Monitor.

https://docs.azure.cn/azure-monitor/logs/logs-ingestion-api-overview

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.

ExpressRoute uses Network insights to provide a detailed topology mapping of all ExpressRoute components (peerings, connections, gateways) in relation with one another. Network insights for ExpressRoute also have preloaded metrics dashboard for availability, throughput, packet drops, and gateway metrics. For more information, see Azure ExpressRoute Insights using Networking Insights.

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 ExpressRoute, see Azure ExpressRoute 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 database store so you can query the data and correlate it with other log data using Log Analytics.

For detailed information on how Azure Monitor stores data, see Azure Monitor data platform.

Resource Logs aren't collected and stored until you create a diagnostic setting and route them to one or more locations.

See Create diagnostic setting to collect platform logs and metrics in Azure for the detailed process for creating a diagnostic setting using the Azure portal, CLI, or PowerShell. When you create a diagnostic setting, you specify which categories of logs to collect. The categories for Azure ExpressRoute are listed in Azure ExpressRoute monitoring data reference.

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 available metrics for ExpressRoute, see Azure ExpressRoute monitoring data reference.

Analyzing metrics

You can analyze metrics for Azure ExpressRoute with metrics from other Azure services using metrics explorer by opening Metrics from the Azure Monitor menu. See Analyze metrics with Azure Monitor metrics explorer for details on using this tool.

For reference, you can see a list of all resource metrics supported in Azure Monitor.

• To view ExpressRoute metrics, filter by Resource Type ExpressRoute circuits.
• To view Global Reach metrics, filter by Resource Type ExpressRoute circuits and select an ExpressRoute circuit resource that has Global Reach enabled.
• To view ExpressRoute Direct metrics, filter Resource Type by ExpressRoute Ports.

Once a metric is selected, the default aggregation is applied. Optionally, you can apply splitting, which shows the metric with different dimensions.

ExpressRoute metrics

To view Metrics, go to the Azure Monitor page and select Metrics. To view ExpressRoute metrics, filter by Resource Type ExpressRoute circuits. To view Global Reach metrics, filter by Resource Type ExpressRoute circuits and select an ExpressRoute circuit resource that has Global Reach enabled. To view ExpressRoute Direct metrics, filter Resource Type by ExpressRoute Ports.

After a metric is selected, the default aggregation is applied. Optionally, you can apply splitting, which shows the metric with different dimensions.

For the ExpressRoute metrics, see Azure ExpressRoute monitoring data reference.

Aggregation Types

Metrics explorer supports sum, maximum, minimum, average and count as aggregation types. You should use the recommended Aggregation type when reviewing the insights for each ExpressRoute metric.

• Sum: The sum of all values captured during the aggregation interval.
• Count: The number of measurements captured during the aggregation interval.
• Average: The average of the metric values captured during the aggregation interval.
• Min: The smallest value captured during the aggregation interval.
• Max: The largest value captured during the aggregation interval.

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 by category. 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 Azure 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.

For the available resource log categories, their associated Log Analytics tables, and the log schemas for ExpressRoute, see Azure ExpressRoute monitoring data reference.

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 Azure monitoring partners are also available. For more information on how to route the activity log, see Overview of the Azure activity log.

More metrics in Log Analytics

You can also view ExpressRoute metrics by going to your ExpressRoute circuit resource and selecting the Logs tab. For any metrics you query, the output contains the following columns.

Column	Type	Description
TimeGrain	string	PT1M (metric values are pushed every minute)
Count	real	Usually is 2 (each MSEE pushes a single metric value every minute)
Minimum	real	The minimum of the two metric values pushed by the two MSEEs
Maximum	real	The maximum of the two metric values pushed by the two MSEEs
Average	real	Equal to (Minimum + Maximum)/2
Total	real	Sum of the two metric values from both MSEEs (the main value to focus on for the metric queried)

Analyzing logs

Data in Azure Monitor Logs is stored in tables where each table has its own set of unique properties.

All resource logs in Azure Monitor have the same fields followed by service-specific fields. The common schema is outlined in Azure Monitor resource log schema. The schema for ExpressRoute resource logs is found in the Azure ExpressRoute Data Reference.

The Activity log is a platform logging that provides insight into subscription-level events. You can view it independently or route it to Azure Monitor Logs, where you can do much more complex queries using Log Analytics.

ExpressRoute stores data in the following tables.

Table	Description
AzureDiagnostics	Common table used by multiple services to store Resource logs. Resource logs from ExpressRoute can be identified with MICROSOFT.NETWORK.
AzureMetrics	Metric data emitted by ExpressRoute that measure their health and performance.

To view these tables, navigate to your ExpressRoute circuit resource and select Logs under Monitoring.

Analyze monitoring data

There are many tools for analyzing monitoring data.

Azure Monitor tools

Azure Monitor supports the following basic tools:

• Metrics explorer, a tool in the Azure portal that allows you to view and analyze metrics for Azure resources. For more information, see Analyze metrics with Azure Monitor metrics explorer.

• Log Analytics, a tool in the Azure portal that allows you to query and analyze log data by using the Kusto query language (KQL). For more information, see Get started with log queries in Azure Monitor.

• The activity log, which has a user interface in the Azure portal for viewing and basic searches. To do more in-depth analysis, you have to route the data to Azure Monitor logs and run more complex queries in Log Analytics.

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.
• 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 export tools

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

• Metrics: Use the REST API for metrics to extract metric data from the Azure Monitor metrics database. The API supports filter expressions to refine the data retrieved. For more information, see Azure Monitor REST API reference.

• Logs: Use the REST API or the associated client libraries.

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).

For a list of common queries for any service, see the Log Analytics queries interface.

Sample Kusto queries

These queries work with the new language.

• Query for Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) route table learned over the last 12 hours.

  AzureDiagnostics
  | where TimeGenerated > ago(12h)
  | where ResourceType == "EXPRESSROUTECIRCUITS"
  | project TimeGenerated, ResourceType , network_s, path_s, OperationName
  

• Query for BGP informational messages by level, resource type, and network.

  AzureDiagnostics
  | where Level == "Informational"
  | where ResourceType == "EXPRESSROUTECIRCUITS"
  | project TimeGenerated, ResourceId , Level, ResourceType , network_s, path_s
  

• Query for Traffic graph BitInPerSeconds in the last one hour.

  AzureMetrics
  | where MetricName == "BitsInPerSecond"
  | summarize by Average, bin(TimeGenerated, 1h), Resource
  | render timechart
  

• Query for Traffic graph BitOutPerSeconds in the last one hour.

  AzureMetrics
  | where MetricName == "BitsOutPerSecond"
  | summarize by Average, bin(TimeGenerated, 1h), Resource
  | render timechart
  

• Query for graph of ArpAvailability in 5-minute intervals.

  AzureMetrics
  | where MetricName == "ArpAvailability"
  | summarize by Average, bin(TimeGenerated, 5m), Resource
  | render timechart
  

• Query for graph of BGP availability in 5-minute intervals.

  AzureMetrics
  | where MetricName == "BGPAvailability"
  | summarize by Average, bin(TimeGenerated, 5m), Resource
  | render timechart
  

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 key alert metrics, dashboards, and guidelines for Azure Landing Zone (ALZ) scenarios.

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.

You can also create the following types of alerts for some Azure services:

• Smart detection alerts on an Application Insights resource automatically warn you of potential performance problems and failure anomalies in your web application. You can migrate smart detection on your Application Insights resource to create alert rules for the different smart detection modules.
• Prometheus alerts alert on Prometheus metrics stored in Azure Monitor managed services for Prometheus . The alert rules are based on the PromQL open-source query language. Your service may not support this type of alert. Currently, Prometheus is used on a limited set of services with a guest operating system, such as Azure Virtual Machine and Azure Container Instances.
• Recommended alert rules are available out-of-box for some Azure resources, including virtual machines, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) resources, and Log Analytics workspaces.

Monitor multiple resources

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.

ExpressRoute alert rules

The following table lists some suggested alert rules for ExpressRoute. These alerts are just examples. You can set alerts for any metric, log entry, or activity log entry listed in the Azure ExpressRoute monitoring data reference.

Alert type	Condition	Description
ARP availability down	Dimension name: Peering Type, Aggregation type: Avg, Operator: Less than, Threshold value: 100%	When ARP availability is down for a peering type.
BGP availability down	Dimension name: Peer, Aggregation type: Avg, Operator: Less than, Threshold value: 100%	When BGP availability is down for a peer.

Alerts for ExpressRoute gateway connections

1. To configure alerts, navigate to Azure Monitor, then select Alerts.

   

2. Select + Create > Alert rule and select the ExpressRoute gateway connection resource. Select Next: Condition > to configure the signal.

   

3. On the Select a signal page, select a metric, resource health, or activity log that you want to be alerted. Depending on the signal you select, you might need to enter additional information such as a threshold value. You can also combine multiple signals into a single alert. Select Next: Actions > to define who and how they get notify.

   

4. Select + Select action groups to choose an existing action group you previously created or select + Create action group to define a new one. In the action group, you determine how notifications get sent and who receives them.

   

5. Select Review + create and then Create to deploy the alert into your subscription.

Advisor recommendations

If critical conditions or imminent changes occur during resource operations, an alert displays on the Overview page in the portal.

You can find more information and recommended fixes for the alert in Advisor recommendations under Monitoring. During normal operations, no advisor recommendations display.

For more information on Azure Advisor, see Azure Advisor overview.

Alerts based on each peering

After you select a metric, certain metric allow you to set up dimensions based on peering or a specific peer (virtual networks).

Configure alerts for activity logs on circuits

When selecting signals to be alerted on, you can select Activity Log signal type.

Related content

• See Azure ExpressRoute monitoring data reference for a reference of the metrics, logs, and other important values created for ExpressRoute.
• See Monitoring Azure resources with Azure Monitor for general details on monitoring Azure resources.