Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate Monitor and Maintain Azure Resources Syllabus

Monitor and Maintain Azure Resources syllabus — full chapter and topic list

Expand any chapter to see its topics and sub-topics. This is the whole examinable outline for Monitor and Maintain Azure Resources in Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate, not a summary of it.

1. 1

   Azure Monitor and Insights

   5 topics

   • Metrics and metric explorer
     • Platform vs custom metrics
     • Aggregation and dimensions
   • Activity log and resource logs
   • Log Analytics workspaces
     • Configuring diagnostic settings
     • Kusto Query Language (KQL) basics
   • Alerts and action groups
     • Metric, log, and activity log alerts
     • Alert processing rules and severity
   • Application Insights overview
2. 2

   Backup and Recovery

   4 topics

   • Recovery Services vaults and Backup vaults
   • Azure VM backup and restore
     • Backup policies and retention
     • File-level and full VM restore
   • Azure Files backup
   • Soft delete for backups
3. 3

   Site Recovery and Business Continuity

   3 topics

   • Azure Site Recovery concepts
     • Replication policies and recovery plans
     • Failover and failback operations
   • Recovery point and recovery time objectives (RPO/RTO)
   • Disaster recovery for Azure VMs

Monitor and Maintain Azure Resources flashcards for Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate

23 of 50 cards from the Monitor and Maintain Azure Resources deck — real questions with worked answers.

1. In Azure Monitor, what are metrics and where are they stored?

   Metrics are numerical values collected at regular intervals that describe some aspect of a resource at a point in time. They are lightweight, near real-time, and stored in a time-series database, retained by default for 93 days.

2. What is Metric Explorer used for in Azure Monitor?

   Metric Explorer is the tool in Azure Monitor used to plot, chart, and visually analyze metrics over time. You select a resource scope, a metric namespace, a metric, and an aggregation to build charts.

3. What aggregation types can be applied to a metric in Metric Explorer?

   Sum, Average (Avg), Minimum (Min), Maximum (Max), and Count.

4. What is the difference between platform metrics and custom metrics in Azure Monitor?

   Platform metrics are collected automatically from Azure resources at no cost. Custom metrics are collected from applications (e.g., via Application Insights) or agents and must be explicitly emitted.

5. What is the default and maximum data granularity for Azure Monitor metrics?

   Platform metrics are collected at a one-minute frequency by default (some at lower frequency), and Metric Explorer can display down to one-minute granularity.

6. What is the Azure Activity Log and what does it record?

   The Activity Log is a subscription-level (control-plane) log that records operations performed ON Azure resources, such as create, update, delete, and administrative/service-health events. It answers who did what, when, on which resource.

7. How long is Azure Activity Log data retained by default, and how do you keep it longer?

   Activity Log entries are retained for 90 days by default. To retain longer, route the log to a Log Analytics workspace, a storage account, or Event Hubs via a diagnostic setting.

8. What is the difference between the Activity Log and resource (diagnostic) logs?

   The Activity Log captures control-plane operations on resources (management actions). Resource logs (formerly diagnostic logs) capture data-plane operations performed within a resource (e.g., key reads from a Key Vault) and are not collected until a diagnostic setting is configured.

9. What Azure feature is required to send resource logs to a destination, and what are the destinations?

   A diagnostic setting is required. Destinations are a Log Analytics workspace, an Azure Storage account (archive), an Event Hub (streaming to third parties), and an Azure Monitor partner solution.

10. What are the three categories of data captured in Azure Monitor's data platform?

    Metrics (numeric time-series), Logs (Log Analytics — text/structured records), and traces/distributed tracing. Conceptually summarized as Metrics and Logs as the two fundamental data types.

11. What is a Log Analytics workspace?

    A Log Analytics workspace is the central repository where Azure Monitor stores log data. It is the destination for resource logs, activity logs, and agent data, and is queried using KQL.

12. What query language is used to query a Log Analytics workspace?

    Kusto Query Language (KQL).

13. What is the default retention period for data in a Log Analytics workspace?

    30 days by default (31 days), extendable up to 730 days (2 years) in interactive retention, with long-term archive available beyond that.

14. In KQL, which operator filters rows by a condition?

    The 'where' operator (e.g., Heartbeat | where Computer == 'VM1').

15. What is an Azure Monitor alert and what are its three states?

    An alert proactively notifies you when conditions are found in monitoring data. The three user-response states are New, Acknowledged, and Closed.

16. What are the main types of Azure Monitor alerts?

    Metric alerts, Log (search query) alerts, Activity Log alerts, and Service Health alerts (plus Smart Detection alerts from Application Insights).

17. What are the components of an Azure Monitor alert rule?

    Scope (target resource), Condition (signal + logic/threshold), Action (action group to invoke), and alert details (name, severity, description).

18. What is an action group in Azure Monitor?

    A reusable, named collection of notification preferences and actions that is triggered when an alert fires. It defines who is notified and what automated actions run.

19. What notification and action types can an action group include?

    Notifications: email, SMS, push (Azure mobile app), voice. Actions: Automation Runbook, Azure Function, Logic App, webhook, secure webhook, ITSM, and Event Hub.

20. What do the Azure Monitor alert severity levels 0 through 4 mean?

    Sev 0 = Critical, Sev 1 = Error, Sev 2 = Warning, Sev 3 = Informational, Sev 4 = Verbose.

21. What is Application Insights?

    Application Insights is the Application Performance Management (APM) feature of Azure Monitor for live web applications. It monitors availability, performance, usage, and failures, and supports distributed tracing.

22. What is the Application Map in Application Insights?

    A visual diagram showing the components of a distributed application and the dependencies/calls between them, with health, performance, and failure data to help locate bottlenecks and failure points.

23. In Application Insights, what does Live Metrics Stream provide?

    A near real-time (one-second latency) view of an application's performance and activity, allowing you to watch metrics and telemetry as events happen without affecting stored data.

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