Monitoring AKS Clusters
1. Monitoring AKS Clusters
In this video, we'll explore how to monitor applications in AKS, ensuring visibility, reliability, and performance across workloads.2. Why monitoring matters
Monitoring is essential for understanding how applications behave in production. Without visibility, issues can go unnoticed until users are impacted.3. Why monitoring matters
Kubernetes provides basic metrics, but AKS integrates with Azure Monitor and Log Analytics to deliver deeper insights. Monitoring helps detect problems early, optimize resource usage, and validate that applications meet performance expectations. It also supports compliance reporting, giving organizations evidence that workloads meet operational and regulatory standards.4. Metrics and dashboards
Metrics are the foundation of monitoring. AKS exposes CPU, memory, and network usage for pods and nodes.5. Metrics and dashboards
Azure Monitor collects these metrics and presents them in dashboards, making trends easy to visualize. Dashboards allow teams to spot anomalies, such as sudden spikes in resource consumption, and take corrective action.6. Metrics and dashboards
Custom dashboards can combine infrastructure metrics with application-level data, such as request latency or error counts, providing a holistic view of performance. By tailoring dashboards to team needs, you ensure that monitoring delivers actionable insights rather than overwhelming detail.7. Logs and diagnostics
Logs provide detailed information about application behavior. In AKS, you can stream logs directly from pods using kubectl logs, or centralize them with Log Analytics. Centralized logging makes it easier to search across multiple pods and correlate events.8. Logs and diagnostics
Diagnostics tools help identify root causes, whether it's a failing container, mis-configured service, or resource bottleneck. Structured logging formats, such as JSON, make it easier to parse and analyze logs automatically.9. Alerts and automation
Integrating monitoring with alerting systems ensures that critical events trigger immediate responses rather than being buried in raw output. Azure Monitor allows you to set thresholds for metrics and trigger alerts when they are exceeded.10. Alerts and automation
For example, if CPU usage stays above 80% for several minutes, an alert can notify the operations team.11. Alerts and automation
Alerts can also trigger automated actions, such as scaling workloads or restarting pods.12. Alerts and automation
By combining alerts with automation, teams reduce manual intervention and shorten recovery times. This proactive approach transforms monitoring from passive observation into active resilience.13. Best practices for monitoring
Effective monitoring requires planning. Collect metrics that reflect both system health and user experience. Avoid overwhelming dashboards with too much data; focus on actionable insights. Use log aggregation to simplify troubleshooting, and configure alerts with meaningful thresholds to avoid false positives. Regularly review and refine monitoring rules as applications evolve, ensuring they remain relevant. Encourage teams to practice incident response using monitoring tools, so they are confident in handling real outages.14. Recap
Monitoring in AKS provides the visibility needed to operate applications confidently. With metrics, logs, dashboards, and alerts, you can detect issues early, optimize performance, and maintain reliability. Mastering monitoring is a critical step toward running production workloads at scale.15. Let's practice!
And now, let's see AKS monitoring in practice!Create Your Free Account
or
By continuing, you accept our Terms of Use, our Privacy Policy and that your data is stored in the USA.