Monitor disconnected operations for Azure Local (preview)

This article explains how to monitor disconnected operations in Azure Local by integrating with external monitoring solutions. Learn how to use Microsoft, non-Microsoft, and open-source monitoring systems to ensure the reliability and performance of your infrastructure and workloads.

For more information on disconnected operations, see Disconnected operations for Azure Local (preview).

Why monitor disconnected operations?

Monitoring is essential to keep your IT systems reliable, fast, and secure. When you continuously collect and analyze system-generated logs and metrics data — such as CPU usage, disk usage and utilization, memory consumption, network traffic, and error rates — you gain real-time visibility into the health of your environments, whether it's on-premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid setup.

You can store monitored data on-premises or in the cloud, depending on your monitoring solution. This flexibility lets you choose the best approach for your organization's needs.

Benefits

Monitoring disconnected operations for Azure Local:

• Ensures the availability and performance of critical systems.
• Detects and diagnoses issues in real-time.
• Analyzes performance trends and patterns.
• Optimizes resource utilization.
• Ensures compliance with security and regulatory requirements.
• Provides insights for capacity planning and resource allocation.

For information on the views that provide insights, visualization, and analysis of your monitored system-generated logs and metrics data, see View types in Operations Manager.

What can be monitored?

You can monitor these components of Azure Local with disconnected operations by using external solutions:

• Azure Local (infrastructure)
• The disconnected operations appliance (local Azure portal and Arc services)
• Virtual machines (VMs)
• Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters

Prerequisites

Install and deploy System Center Operations Manager.

Monitor Azure Local infrastructure

The disconnected operations appliance provides the local Azure portal and Arc services to deploy and manage Azure Local instances. Monitoring the appliance ensures the local portal and services remain available. Use System Center Operations Manager and the disconnected operations management pack for this purpose.

System Center Operations Manager

When you deploy Azure Local by using the disconnected operations feature, integrate with external solutions such as System Center Operations Manager to monitor the instance and nodes.

1. Install the Operations Manager agent on each node. Follow the steps in Install Windows Agent Manually Using MOMAgent.msi. Choose the installation method that fits your environment.

2. Import these management packs:

   • Windows Server Operating System 2016 and above for Base OS

   • Microsoft System Center Management Pack for Windows Server Cluster 2016 and above for Cluster

   • Microsoft System Center 2019 Management Pack for Hyper-V

   • AzS HCI S2D MP for Storage Spaces Direct (S2D)

For more information, see Operations Manager.

Disconnected operations management pack

The disconnected operations management pack for System Center Operations Manager lets you monitor Azure Local instances and nodes deployed with the disconnected operations feature. Use this management pack to monitor the health and performance of your Azure Local infrastructure in a disconnected environment.

Capabilities of the disconnected operations management pack include:

• Management for a single disconnected operations deployment.

• Support for Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS).

• Health and metrics dashboards.

• Preconfigured alert rules based on metrics for issue detection and operator action, including certificate expiration warnings.

• Notification and reporting support.

The following table lists the download and user guide for the System Center Management Pack. Select the download that supports your System Center Operations Manager installation.

For monitoring failover clusters, see Monitoring Failover Cluster with Operations Manager.

Monitor virtual machines

Monitor virtual machines (VMs) on Azure Local with disconnected operations by using System Center Operations Manager, non-Microsoft solutions, or open-source solutions. Install the appropriate agents in each VM.

For more information, see Operations Manager.

Monitor Azure Kubernetes Service clusters

Monitor Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters and container apps on Azure Local with disconnected operations by using non-Microsoft solutions or open-source solutions. Here are some common solutions for monitoring AKS clusters:

• Prometheus: An open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit designed for reliability and scalability. It collects metrics from configured targets at specified intervals, evaluates rule expressions, and can trigger alerts if certain conditions are met.

  For more information on Prometheus, see Overview Prometheus.

• Grafana: An open-source analytics and monitoring platform that works with Prometheus and other data sources to show metrics and logs. It provides a rich set of features for creating dashboards, alerts, and reports.

  For more information on Grafana, see Grafana OSS.

Download these solutions from their repositories and install them on an AKS cluster running on Azure Local, or deploy them on a Kubernetes cluster outside Azure Local.

This feature is available only in Azure Local 2506.