If you have ever worked in Systems Administration or Cloud Administration; you are very familiar with the “system is down” event. People are scrambling to figure-out what happened…when it happened….and was anyone notified.

In Microsoft Azure, Azure monitor can be setup with alerts that will help in situations like these.

Azure Monitor can be used to set alerts by following these steps:

Log in to Azure Portal. Navigating to www.portal.azure.com, and signing into Azure should suffice for you to gain access to Azure Portal.

Access Azure Monitor in the left-hand navigation menu by searching and selecting “Azure Monitor.”

Overview of Metrics. You’ll find several metrics, logs and insights on the Azure Monitor dashboard. Clicking “Metrics”, will reveal performance data about your resources.

Select Resource : Select the resource you want to use (virtual machines or apps). Use filters to narrow the selection.

Create Alerts. Navigate to the Alerts section in Azure Monitor after selecting a resource. Click “+New Alert Rule” in the section.

Define Condition : Create a condition that is based upon metrics (e.g. CPU usage. Set a threshold alert level at which you want to generate alerts.

Action Groups: Create a new action group and specify how you would like to be notified.

Alert Details – Enter all the relevant alert information, including the name of the alert and its severity level.

Review and Create. Once all settings have bee verified, review the settings again before clicking “Create Alarm Rule” to activate alerts and monitoring.