Azure Observability Services

Services

Service Use When MCP Tools CLI

Azure Monitor Metrics, alerts, dashboards azure__monitor

az monitor

Application Insights APM, distributed tracing azure__applicationinsights

az monitor app-insights

Log Analytics Log queries, KQL azure__kusto

az monitor log-analytics

Alerts Notifications, actions

az monitor alert

Workbooks Interactive reports azure__workbooks

MCP Server (Preferred)

When Azure MCP is enabled:

Monitor

• azure__monitor with command monitor_metrics_query

• Query metrics

• azure__monitor with command monitor_logs_query

• Query logs with KQL

Application Insights

• azure__applicationinsights with command applicationinsights_component_list
• List App Insights resources

Log Analytics

• azure__kusto with command kusto_cluster_list

• List clusters

• azure__kusto with command kusto_query

• Execute KQL queries

If Azure MCP is not enabled: Run /azure:setup or enable via /mcp .

CLI Reference

List Log Analytics workspaces

az monitor log-analytics workspace list --output table

Query logs with KQL

az monitor log-analytics query
--workspace WORKSPACE_ID
--analytics-query "AzureActivity | take 10"

List Application Insights

az monitor app-insights component list --output table

List alerts

az monitor alert list --output table

Query metrics

az monitor metrics list
--resource RESOURCE_ID
--metric "Percentage CPU"

Common KQL Queries

// Recent errors AppExceptions | where TimeGenerated > ago(1h) | project TimeGenerated, Message, StackTrace | order by TimeGenerated desc

// Request performance AppRequests | where TimeGenerated > ago(1h) | summarize avg(DurationMs), count() by Name | order by avg_DurationMs desc

// Resource usage AzureMetrics | where TimeGenerated > ago(1h) | where MetricName == "Percentage CPU" | summarize avg(Average) by Resource

Monitoring Strategy

What to Monitor Service Metric/Log

Application errors App Insights Exceptions, failed requests

Performance App Insights Response time, dependencies

Infrastructure Azure Monitor CPU, memory, disk

Security Log Analytics Sign-ins, audit logs

Costs Cost Management Budget alerts

SDK Quick References

For programmatic access to monitoring services, see the condensed SDK guides:

• OpenTelemetry: Python | TypeScript | Python Exporter

• Monitor Query: Python | Java

• Log Ingestion: Python | Java

• App Insights Mgmt: .NET

Service Details

For deep documentation on specific services:

• Application Insights setup -> appinsights-instrumentation skill

• KQL query patterns -> Log Analytics KQL documentation

• Alert configuration -> Azure Monitor alerts documentation