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

bash

# 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

kql

// 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

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azure-observability

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