Observability at Scale: Monitoring Microservices with Azure Monitor

Modern microservices architectures require deep observability to maintain reliability. Azure Monitor and Application Insights provide the tools for full-stack visibility.

1. Introduction

Observability includes:

• Logs
• Metrics
• Traces
• Alerts

These pillars help teams identify failures before users notice.

2. Distributed Tracing

Enable tracing in each service:

dotnet add package Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.AspNetCore

Use correlation IDs to track cross-service calls.

3. Metrics

Create custom metrics:

var telemetry = new TelemetryClient();
telemetry.TrackMetric("order_processing_time", duration);

Monitor:

• Latency
• Error rates
• Queue depth

4. Logs

Use Azure Monitor Logs (KQL):

requests
| where duration > 2s
| summarize count() by operation_Name

5. Alerts

Best practice alerts:

• CPU / Memory
• Error rate spikes
• Dependency failures
• Dead letter queue count

6. Dashboards

Build Azure Dashboard tiles for:

• Live metrics
• Trace maps
• Heatmaps

7. Conclusion

With Azure Monitor, teams achieve production-grade observability, enabling proactive detection and faster troubleshooting for microservices.