AZ-400 Question 296
Single answerYou manage a production environment of ten Linux-based Azure VMs running an internal web application. The system experiences intermittent slowdowns, and your initial logs indicate possible memory leaks and disk I/O bottlenecks. You want to reliably track CPU, memory, disk, and network usage over time and set performance thresholds that notify your team before service disruption occurs. Which solution should you implement to achieve this?
- A
Enable Azure Monitor VM Insights by installing the Log Analytics agent on each VM, configure metric collection for CPU, memory, disk, and network, and set alerts based on threshold rules in Azure Monitor.
- B
Enable Azure Application Insights in each VM� codebase to capture runtime performance data, including CPU and memory utilization at the operating system level.
- C
Use Azure Resource Health with its default configuration to automatically alert on CPU, memory, disk, and network usage for each VM.
- D
Install third-party load testing software on the VMs to run daily performance tests and distribute email alerts when metrics exceed expected ranges.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
Using Azure Monitor VM Insights with the Log Analytics or Azure Monitor agent is the recommended solution for gathering and analyzing CPU, memory, disk, and network metrics across multiple VMs. It enables centralized monitoring with configurable alerts and dashboards based on real-world operational data. For more details, refer to Microsoft� documentation on Azure Monitor VM Insights and configuring performance metrics: https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/azure-monitor/vm/vminsights-overview.
- A. Correct.
Correct. Azure Monitor VM Insights, along with the Log Analytics agent, is designed to collect detailed CPU, memory, disk, and network performance data across VMs. It provides out-of-the-box charts, insights, and alerting capabilities. You can configure threshold-based alerts in Azure Monitor to proactively detect abnormal resource usage.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Azure Application Insights primarily focuses on application-level telemetry and request-level metrics, rather than providing comprehensive OS-level monitoring (e.g., disk usage, memory available at the OS layer). While it can track some performance data, it is not the best approach for full VM infrastructure monitoring.
- C. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Azure Resource Health mainly reports on the availability and overall status of your Azure resources (for example, if a VM is down or unavailable). It does not provide granular real-time metrics or threshold-based alerts for CPU, memory, disk I/O, and network usage.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Third-party load testing software can measure performance under synthetic workloads, but it does not integrate natively with Azure Monitor. It also may not give continuous insights on resource utilization during normal production workloads, making it less reliable for proactive alerts and real-time troubleshooting.