Windows Azure Event Monitor

Applies To: Operations Manager 2007

You create an event monitor for a Windows Azure application by using the Authoring console to create a monitor based on the event monitor type in the Monitoring Pack for Windows Azure Applications. This monitor type sets a Critical or Warning state when a particular event is received and a Healthy state when a second event is received. The monitor must specify an expression for each event which requires some editing of XML.

This procedure provides an example of how to create an event monitor for a Windows Azure application. that sets a critical health state when an event 100 is detected and a healthy state when event 101 is detected. You can create other criteria by modifying the XML in the monitor’s configuration. Examples of other criteria are provided after the procedure.

Important

This procedure uses the Operations Manager Authoring console which is available as part of the System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Authoring Resource Kit (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=202663). This procedure cannot be completed using the Operations console.

Tip

This procedures uses display names for the components of the management pack. To have the Authoring console use display names, on the Tools menu, click Options, and then click Use display names. If you do not select this option, then the console will use actual names which will be different than the display names used here.

Note

The event properties available to use in Windows Azure event monitor criteria are the same as the properties for Windows events. These are listed in the Events section of the Management Pack Authoring Guide at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=205695. The only exception is the event description which is not currently available.

Note

The criteria used for the Windows Azure event monitor is formatted as an ExpressionType. This is documented with examples at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=205696.

To create an event monitor for Windows Azure

  1. In the Authoring console, on the Tools menu, click Import MP from Management Group.

  2. In the Import MP from Management Group dialog box, select the name of the root management server in your management group and click Connect.

  3. In the Import from Management Group dialog box, select the management pack that you created when running the Windows Azure Application template and click Import.

  4. Click the Health Model navigation button.

  5. In the navigation pane, click Monitors.

  6. In the Actions pane, click New, and then click Custom Unit Monitor.

  7. In the Choose a unique identifier dialog box, enter a name for the monitor such as MyAzureApplication.EventMonitor, and then click OK. The Properties dialog box for the new monitor opens.

  8. On the General tab, do the following:

    1. Enter a display name for the monitor. This is the text that will be displayed in the Health Explorer.

    2. In the Target box, select the role instance class for the Azure application. This will have the name Windows Azure Role Instance followed by the name of the Windows Azure application enclosed in parentheses.

    3. In the Parent Monitor box, select Availability.

  9. On the Configuration tab, do the following:

    1. Click the Browse for a type link.

    2. In the Choose unit monitor type dialog box, select Windows Azure Event Log Simple Monitor Type, and then click OK.

    3. Enter the following values:

      • IntervalSeconds: 300

      • TimeoutSeconds: 60

      • XPathQuery: EventNumber

      • Operator: Equal

      • XPathQuery: 100

      • XPathQuery: EventNumber

      • Operator: Equal

      • XPathQuery: 101

    4. Click Edit to open the custom editor.

    5. Change the XPathQuery tags for the event numbers to Value. Do not change the other tags. The complete criteria with the changed tags highlighted is shown in the following image.

      Azure Event Monitor Criteria

    6. Close the editor and save the monitor back to the console.

  10. On the Health tab, set the following values:

    Monitor Condition Operational State Health State

    First Event Raised

    First Event Raised

    Critical

    Second Event Raised

    Second Event Raised

    Healthy

  11. On the Alerting tab, do the following:

    1. Select the Generate alerts for this monitor and Generate an alert when the monitor is in a critical health state check boxes.

    2. Enter a name for the alert, and set the Priority and Severity boxes to the value that you want the alert to have.

    3. In the Alert description box, enter the following:

      $Data/Context/EventDescription$

  12. Click OK to save and close the monitor.

  13. On the Tools menu, click Export MP to Management Group.

  14. In the Export MP from Management Group dialog box, select the name of the root management server in your management group and click Connect.

  15. Close the Authoring console.