Azure Monitor and M3DB Integration

Input and output integration overview

Gather metrics from Azure resources using the Azure Monitor API.

This plugin allows Telegraf to stream metrics to M3DB using the Prometheus Remote Write protocol, enabling scalable ingestion through the M3 Coordinator.

Integration details

Azure Monitor

The Azure Monitor Telegraf plugin is specifically designed for gathering metrics from various Azure resources using the Azure Monitor API. Users must provide specific credentials such as client_id, client_secret, tenant_id, and subscription_id to authenticate and gain access to their Azure resources. Additionally, the plugin supports functionality to collect metrics from both individual resources and resource groups or subscriptions, allowing for flexible and scalable metric collection tailored to user needs. This plugin is ideal for organizations leveraging Azure cloud infrastructure, providing crucial insights into resource performance and utilization over time, facilitating proactive management and optimization of cloud resources.

M3DB

This configuration uses Telegraf’s HTTP output plugin with prometheusremotewrite format to send metrics directly to M3DB through the M3 Coordinator. M3DB is a distributed time series database designed for scalable, high-throughput metric storage. It supports ingestion of Prometheus remote write data via its Coordinator component, which manages translation and routing into the M3DB cluster. This approach enables organizations to collect metrics from systems that aren’t natively instrumented for Prometheus (e.g., Windows, SNMP, legacy systems) and ingest them efficiently into M3’s long-term, high-performance storage engine. The setup is ideal for high-scale observability stacks with Prometheus compatibility requirements.

Configuration

Azure Monitor

# Gather Azure resources metrics from Azure Monitor API
[[inputs.azure_monitor]]
  # can be found under Overview->Essentials in the Azure portal for your application/service
  subscription_id = "<>"
  # can be obtained by registering an application under Azure Active Directory
  client_id = "<>"
  # can be obtained by registering an application under Azure Active Directory.
  # If not specified Default Azure Credentials chain will be attempted:
  # - Environment credentials (AZURE_*)
  # - Workload Identity in Kubernetes cluster
  # - Managed Identity
  # - Azure CLI auth
  # - Developer Azure CLI auth
  client_secret = "<>"
  # can be found under Azure Active Directory->Properties
  tenant_id = "<>"
  # Define the optional Azure cloud option e.g. AzureChina, AzureGovernment or AzurePublic. The default is AzurePublic.
  # cloud_option = "AzurePublic"

  # resource target #1 to collect metrics from
  [[inputs.azure_monitor.resource_target]]
    # can be found under Overview->Essentials->JSON View in the Azure portal for your application/service
    # must start with 'resourceGroups/...' ('/subscriptions/xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx'
    # must be removed from the beginning of Resource ID property value)
    resource_id = "<>"
    # the metric names to collect
    # leave the array empty to use all metrics available to this resource
    metrics = [ "<>", "<>" ]
    # metrics aggregation type value to collect
    # can be 'Total', 'Count', 'Average', 'Minimum', 'Maximum'
    # leave the array empty to collect all aggregation types values for each metric
    aggregations = [ "<>", "<>" ]

  # resource target #2 to collect metrics from
  [[inputs.azure_monitor.resource_target]]
    resource_id = "<>"
    metrics = [ "<>", "<>" ]
    aggregations = [ "<>", "<>" ]

  # resource group target #1 to collect metrics from resources under it with resource type
  [[inputs.azure_monitor.resource_group_target]]
    # the resource group name
    resource_group = "<>"

    # defines the resources to collect metrics from
    [[inputs.azure_monitor.resource_group_target.resource]]
      # the resource type
      resource_type = "<>"
      metrics = [ "<>", "<>" ]
      aggregations = [ "<>", "<>" ]

    # defines the resources to collect metrics from
    [[inputs.azure_monitor.resource_group_target.resource]]
      resource_type = "<>"
      metrics = [ "<>", "<>" ]
      aggregations = [ "<>", "<>" ]

  # resource group target #2 to collect metrics from resources under it with resource type
  [[inputs.azure_monitor.resource_group_target]]
    resource_group = "<>"

    [[inputs.azure_monitor.resource_group_target.resource]]
      resource_type = "<>"
      metrics = [ "<>", "<>" ]
      aggregations = [ "<>", "<>" ]

  # subscription target #1 to collect metrics from resources under it with resource type
  [[inputs.azure_monitor.subscription_target]]
    resource_type = "<>"
    metrics = [ "<>", "<>" ]
    aggregations = [ "<>", "<>" ]

  # subscription target #2 to collect metrics from resources under it with resource type
  [[inputs.azure_monitor.subscription_target]]
    resource_type = "<>"
    metrics = [ "<>", "<>" ]
    aggregations = [ "<>", "<>" ]
</code></pre>

M3DB

# Configuration for sending metrics to M3
[outputs.http]
  ## URL is the address to send metrics to
  url = "https://M3_HOST:M3_PORT/api/v1/prom/remote/write"

  ## HTTP Basic Auth credentials
  username = "admin"
  password = "password"

  ## Data format to output.
  data_format = "prometheusremotewrite"

  ## Outgoing HTTP headers
  [outputs.http.headers]
    Content-Type = "application/x-protobuf"
    Content-Encoding = "snappy"
    X-Prometheus-Remote-Write-Version = "0.1.0"

Input and output integration examples

Azure Monitor

1. Dynamic Resource Monitoring: Use the Azure Monitor plugin to dynamically gather metrics from Azure resources based on specific criteria like tags or resource types. Organizations can automate the process of loading and unloading resource metrics, enabling better performance tracking and optimization based on resource utilization patterns.

2. Multi-Cloud Monitoring Integration: Integrate metrics collected from Azure Monitor with other cloud providers using a centralized monitoring solution. This allows organizations to view and analyze performance data across multiple cloud deployments, providing a holistic overview of resource performance and costs, and streamlining operations.

3. Anomaly Detection and Alerting: Leverage the metrics gathered via the Azure Monitor plugin in conjunction with machine learning algorithms to detect anomalies in resource utilization. By establishing baseline performance metrics and automatically alerting on deviations, organizations can mitigate risks and address performance issues before they escalate.

4. Historical Performance Analysis: Use the collected Azure metrics to conduct historical analysis by feeding the data into a data warehousing solution. This enables organizations to track trends over time, allowing for detailed reporting and decision-making based on historical performance data.

M3DB

1. Large-Scale Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring: Deploy Telegraf agents across thousands of virtual machines and containers to collect metrics and stream them into M3DB through the M3 Coordinator. This provides reliable, long-term visibility with minimal storage overhead and high availability.

2. Legacy System Metrics Ingestion: Use Telegraf to gather metrics from older systems that lack native Prometheus exporters (e.g., Windows servers, SNMP devices) and forward them to M3DB via remote write. This bridges modern observability workflows with legacy infrastructure.

3. Centralized App Telemetry Aggregation: Collect application-specific telemetry using Telegraf’s plugin ecosystem (e.g., exec, http, jolokia) and push it into M3DB for centralized storage and query via PromQL. This enables unified analytics across diverse data sources.

4. Hybrid Cloud Observability: Install Telegraf agents on-prem and in the cloud to collect and remote-write metrics into a centralized M3DB cluster. This ensures consistent visibility across environments while avoiding the complexity of running Prometheus federation layers.

Feedback

Thank you for being part of our community! If you have any general feedback or found any bugs on these pages, we welcome and encourage your input. Please submit your feedback in the InfluxDB community Slack.