Configure Azure Metrics

Complete the following steps to configure Azure Metrics.

Select your platform

Select the platform from the drop-down menu.

Install Grafana Alloy

Grafana Alloy includes an embedded exporter to gather and send metrics to Grafana Cloud.

If you have not already installed Alloy where you intend to run Azure Metrics, click Run Grafana Alloy.
At the Alloy configuration screen, either create a token or use an existing token.
1. To create a token, enter a token name, then click Create token. The token displays on the screen and is added to the command for running Alloy. Copy the command and paste it into the terminal.
2. To use an existing token, paste it into the token field, then click Proceed to install integration.
Copy the command and paste it into the terminal.
Click Proceed to install integration.

Configure access for Grafana Alloy to gather Azure Metrics

To export metrics from Azure, Grafana Alloy needs the proper authorization to pull data from your Azure subscriptions.

Click Setup instructions.
At the Configure authentication for Grafana Alloy screen, follow the steps to create a service principal with the Monitoring Reader role, using the Azure CLI.
Alloy uses the Azure sdk for go. The sdk has multiple options for configuring authentication to Azure, including, but not limited to:
- A service principal with environment variable
- A workload identity
- A managed identity
No matter the option, you must assign the identity you choose to the Azure Monitoring Reader role for any Azure subscriptions you want to monitor. The following example shows how to can create a service principal with the Monitoring Reader role using the Azure CLI. This is just one example. Refer to the various options for configuring authentication in Azure documentation.

Configure Alloy

Set up Grafana Alloy to get metrics from Azure Metrics.

Navigate to the configuration file for your Alloy instance.

Copy and append the following to your Alloy configuration file so that Grafana Alloy can scrape your Azure Metrics instances. The prometheus.exporter.azure component generates metrics from the Azure Metrics instance.

 prometheus.exporter.azure "integrations_azure_exporter" {
   subscriptions = ["<subscription_id>"]
   resource_type = "<resource_type>"
   metrics       = ["<metric>"]
   regions       = ["<region>"]
 }

 prometheus.scrape "integrations_azure_exporter" {
   targets    = prometheus.exporter.azure.integrations_azure_exporter.targets
   forward_to = [prometheus.remote_write.metrics_service.receiver]
   job_name   = "integrations/azure_exporter"
 }

Find the value for these properties in Azure and replace them with the required appropriate values in your Alloy configuration file:

Property	Value (required)
`subscriptions`	The Azure subscription you want to scrape metrics from. If you need to scrape multiple Azure services, create one exporter for each service.
`resource_type`	The Azure Resource Type you want to scrape metrics from. Find valid values as the heading on Supported Metrics with Azure Monitor. For example: `Microsoft.Cache/redis` or `Microsoft.ContainerService/managedClusters`.
`metrics`	The metrics to scrape from resources. Find valid values in the Metric column for the `resource_type` on Supported Metrics with Azure Monitor. For example: `node_cpu_usage_millicores` for the `Microsoft.ContainerService/managedClusters` resource type.
`regions`	A list of Azure region name strings. With this field, metrics can be gathered for all resources in the subscription from each region listed and bypass Resource Graph. Cannot be used when `resource_graph_query_filter` is used.

Click Optional properties to add more optional properties.

Property	Value (optional)
`included_dimensions`	Includes Dimensions available to a Metric definition on Supported Metrics with Azure Monitor. For example: `node` and `nodepool` in the `node_cpu_usage_millicores` metric, for the resource type of `Microsoft.ContainerService/managedClusters`.
`included_resource_tags`	A list of resource tags to include on the final metrics For example, `node`.
`resource_graph_query_filter`	A string containing a Kusto query to further filter data from the resource graph API. Cannot be used when `regions` is used.