Azure Monitor Data Sources

Depending on the Azure service, different data may be provided through Azure Monitor. In this illustration, the data provided through Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)-based services (those using Azure VMs directly or indirectly) is shown on the left. These services, which include Azure VMs and scale sets, Cloud Services, and Service Fabric, have four layers of diagnostic data. On the right is an example of what most Azure Platform as a Service (PaaS) services, such as Azure SQL Database and Azure Batch, provide.

Metrics provide near real-time performance indicators, and they are available at every layer other than the Azure infrastructure.

Azure activity logs contain data on operations relating to Azure resources, such as deletion of a VM or creation of a database, as well as service health incidents, alerts, security events, and recommendations. These differ from diagnostic logs, which track resource operations, such as those within a VM (typical events generated by Windows or Linux), database, or transcoding stream.