Microsoft - AZ-305: Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions

Sample Questions

Explanation:

An effective method to stream data from Azure Monitor to external tools is by using Azure Event Hubs.

Routing your monitoring data, such as Azure platform logs and metrics, to an event hub with Azure Monitor enables you to easily integrate with external SIEM and monitoring tools. The following table lists examples of tools with Azure Monitor integration.

Reference: Stream Azure monitoring data to an event hub and external partner

• Operating system logs from VM1 must be collected and stored in a Log Analytics workspace.
• Syslog data logs from VM2 must be archived to a storage account.

Explanation:

Azure Monitor Logs is a centralized software as a service (SaaS) platform for collecting, analyzing, and acting on telemetry data generated by Azure and non-Azure resources and applications. You can collect logs, manage log data and costs, and consume different types of data in one Log Analytics workspace, the primary Azure Monitor Logs resource.

The Azure Monitor Agent collects monitoring data from the guest operating system of Azure and hybrid virtual machines (VMs). Azure Monitor Agent on Linux collects syslog. Logs can then be exported (archived) to a storage account using Azure Monitor diagnostic settings.

References:

Azure Monitor Logs overview

Azure Monitor Agent overview

Azure Monitor Agent supported operating systems and environments

• Ensure that users have the correct permission for the correct resources and that the permissions are evaluated every quarter.
• If a user is assigned a new role, ensure that the correct permissions are granted for the correct resources and regularly evaluated for the new role.
• When a user leaves the company, ensure that the user’s permissions are revoked.

Explanation:

Access reviews in Microsoft Entra ID, part of Microsoft Entra, enable organizations to efficiently manage group memberships, access to enterprise applications, and role assignments. User access can be reviewed regularly to make sure only the right people have continued access.

Why are access reviews important?

Microsoft Entra ID enables you to collaborate with users from inside your organization, and with external users. Users can join groups, invite guests, connect to cloud apps, and work remotely from either their work or personal devices. The convenience of using self-service has led to a need for better access management capabilities.

• As new employees join, how do you ensure they have the access they need to be productive?
• As people move teams or leave the company, how do you make sure that their old access is removed?
• Excessive access rights can lead to compromises.
• Excessive access rights can also lead to audit findings as they indicate a lack of control over access.
• You have to proactively engage with resource owners to ensure they regularly review who has access to their resources.

Reference: What are access reviews?

• Monitor the availability of App1 and send notifications if any availability issues are detected.
• Monitor the usage of Azure Functions by App1 and send notifications if high usage is detected.
• Analyze user behavior of App1.

Explanation:

Azure App Service provides several options for monitoring resources for availability, performance, and operation. Options include diagnostic settings, Application Insights, log stream, metrics, quotas and alerts, and activity logs.

For supported App Service stacks, you can turn on Application Insights from the Azure portal without changing your code. Use a connection string to connect the app to your Application Insights resource.

Application Insights Experiences

Application Insights supports OpenTelemetry (OTel) to collect telemetry data in a standardized format across platforms. Integration with Azure services allows for efficient monitoring and diagnostics, improving application observability and performance.

Investigate

• Application dashboard: An at-a-glance assessment of your application's health and performance.
• Application map: A visual overview of application architecture and components' interactions.
• Live metrics: A real-time analytics dashboard for insight into application activity and performance.
• Search view: Trace and diagnose transactions to identify issues and optimize performance.
• Availability view: Proactively monitor and test the availability and responsiveness of application endpoints.
• Failures view: Identify and analyze failures in your application to minimize downtime.
• Performance view: Review application performance metrics and potential bottlenecks.
• Agents details: A unified view for monitoring AI agents across Microsoft Foundry, Copilot Studio, and third-party agents.

Monitoring

• Alerts: Monitor a wide range of aspects of your application and trigger various actions.
• Metrics: Dive deep into metrics data to understand usage patterns and trends.
• Diagnostic settings: Configure streaming export of platform logs and metrics to the destination of your choice.
• Logs: Retrieve, consolidate, and analyze all data collected into Azure Monitoring Logs.
• Workbooks: Create interactive reports and dashboards that visualize application monitoring data.
• Dashboards with Grafana: Create, customize, and share Grafana dashboards for Application Insights data directly in the Azure portal.
• SDK Stats: Visualize exporter success, dropped counts, retry counts, and drop reasons from Application Insights SDKs and agents.

Usage

• Users, sessions, and events: Determine when, where, and how users interact with your web app.
• Funnels: Analyze conversion rates to identify where users progress or drop off in the funnel.
• Flows: Visualize user paths on your site to identify high engagement areas and exit points.
• Cohorts: Group users by shared characteristics to simplify trend identification, segmentation, and performance troubleshooting.

Application Insights automatically collects request rates, dependency calls, failures, and performance metrics for Azure Functions and supports alerting on usage thresholds.

References:

Monitor Azure App Service

Introduction to Application Insights - OpenTelemetry observability

• Supports multiple analytic languages
• Integrates with Microsoft Power BI
• Works with multiple data stores
• Supports visualizations

Explanation:

Azure Databricks is a unified, open analytics platform for building, deploying, sharing, and maintaining enterprise-grade data, analytics, and AI solutions at scale. The Databricks Data Intelligence Platform integrates with cloud storage and security in your cloud account, and manages and deploys cloud infrastructure for you.

Azure Databricks provides built-in dashboarding and integrates with Power BI for advanced visual analytics. Databricks notebooks support SQL, Python, Scala, and R on Apache Spark.

References:

What is Azure Databricks?

Power BI with Azure Databricks