Getting Started with Azure Health Check for Better Uptime

Azure Health Check is a monitoring tool that helps you identify potential issues with your Azure resources before they affect your application's uptime. It's like having a personal assistant that keeps an eye on your resources and alerts you to any potential problems.

To get started with Azure Health Check, you need to create a workspace and add the necessary resources. This can be done in just a few clicks, and it's a great way to ensure that your resources are running smoothly.

By using Azure Health Check, you can reduce downtime and improve the overall performance of your application. It's a simple yet effective way to keep your resources running smoothly and your users happy.

Azure Health Check is a free service that's available to all Azure customers, making it a great option for businesses of all sizes.

Constantly checking the health of your Azure health check is crucial, and setting up notifications if something goes wrong is a must. You should automate all of your API health checks using a fault-tolerant API monitoring solution.

Using a dedicated API monitoring solution reduces the risk of monitoring tool outages and bugs. For a list of various services for API monitoring, read our post on the top API monitoring solutions.

Automating API health checks can save you a lot of time and effort in the long run, and it's a best practice that you should definitely follow.

To get details on the health of your API, you can use the API health check endpoint. This endpoint investigates various elements that can prevent your API from responding to incoming requests.

Downstream APIs need to be operational for your API's functionality to work. Verify that the downstream APIs you rely on are operational.

Database connection is also crucial. Make sure the connection is active when performing the health assessment.

Database response time is another important factor. Measure the usual Database query's average response time to ensure it's within acceptable limits.

Memory consumption can also impact your API's health. Be aware of memory leaks that may create a spike in memory utilization, disrupting services.

In-flight messages can also indicate a deeper problem if there are too many. Does your API support message queuing? If so, keep an eye on the number of in-flight messages.

You can also review active incidents, planned maintenance, and health advisories in a personalized dashboard for service health based on your Azure subscriptions, services, and regions. This will help you stay informed about the service issues that affect you.

Regularly checking the health of your API is crucial, and setting up notifications for any issues is a must.

You should constantly check the health of your API to catch any problems early on. Constantly monitoring your API ensures you can quickly respond to any issues that may arise.

Setting up notifications is a great way to stay on top of API health, and can be configured to alert you if something is wrong. This way, you'll be notified immediately if your API experiences any problems.

API health checks should be automated to save time and reduce the risk of human error. Automated checks ensure that your API is always checked, even when you're not around.

Notifications should be set up to alert you if your API is experiencing any issues, such as high error rates or slow response times. This way, you'll be quickly notified if something is wrong and can take action to fix it.

Automating API health checks is a must, as it reduces the risk of monitoring tool outages and bugs. Using a dedicated API monitoring solution can help you achieve this.

Automating API health checks allows you to set up notifications if something is wrong with your API, ensuring you're always aware of any issues. This is crucial for maintaining the health of your API.

Fault-tolerant API monitoring solutions can automate all of your API health checks, making it easier to keep an eye on your API's health. For a list of various services for API monitoring, check out our post on the top API monitoring solutions.

API health check endpoints can investigate a wide range of elements, including the status of downstream operations, database connections, and memory consumption. Each API has its requirements, but some common checks include verifying that dependent APIs are operational and that database connections are active.

Automating API health checks can help you stay on top of potential issues before they become major problems. By setting up customizable cloud alerts, you can receive notifications about active and upcoming service issues, giving you time to act and mitigate downtime.

Disabling cache is crucial for API health check endpoints. This ensures that the most recent status of your microservice is returned for each request.

If your health endpoint's caching is enabled, HTTP caching can fulfil the request, which may not return the current status. To prevent this, you must disable cache.

Add Cache-Control: no-cache to your endpoint to turn off the cache. This simple step can make a big difference in the accuracy of your API health check endpoint.

Response time matters, and if your API takes longer than expected to respond, there's a problem. If it takes 30 seconds for the endpoint to reply, there's an issue with the API.

Azure Monitor provides platform metrics for most services, which are individually defined for each namespace and stored in the Azure Monitor time-series metrics database.

These metrics are lightweight and capable of supporting near real-time alerting, used to track the performance of a resource over time. Collection is automatic, no configuration is required.

API ping and API health check are two distinct concepts that serve different purposes. The API ping endpoint returns a 200 OK message, but it only briefly verifies that the API is active and reachable.

API ping endpoints can be misleading, as I've seen instances where they return 200 OK even when the API is broken. This is because API ping only confirms that HTTP requests make it to the API.

In contrast, the API health check endpoint verifies several things before returning the state of the API and its dependents. It's a more comprehensive approach that supports all API ping use cases.

API health check is preferable to API ping because it offers many more advantages and provides a more accurate picture of the API's status.

Response time is crucial in addition to how quickly the API health check endpoint responded.

If your API takes longer than expected to respond, you'll start getting warnings.

The time it takes for the endpoint to respond to the request is essential.

A response time of 30 seconds or more indicates a problem with the API.

Platform metrics are a crucial aspect of monitoring your resources' performance. Azure Monitor provides platform metrics for most services, which are individually defined for each namespace.

These metrics are stored in the Azure Monitor time-series metrics database, making them lightweight and capable of supporting near real-time alerting. You can use them to track the performance of a resource over time.

Azure Monitor collects platform metrics automatically, so no configuration is required. This means you can start monitoring your resources' performance without any extra effort.

You can route some platform metrics to Azure Monitor Logs / Log Analytics to query them with other log data. Check the DS export setting for each metric to see if you can use a diagnostic setting to route the metric to Azure Monitor Logs / Log Analytics.

Here are some key metrics you can gather for App Service resources:

These metrics can be used to monitor performance, memory, CPU, and other attributes. You can view them by aggregates on data, instances, time range, and other filters.