Generally available: App Insights Extension for Azure Virtual Machines and VM Scale Sets
Published date: March 07, 2023
The Azure Monitor team is happy to share that the application insights extension for virtual machines and virtual machine scale sets is now generally available. You can now easily monitor your IIS-hosted .NET Framework and .NET Core applications running on Azure VMs and VM scale sets. Customers can enable this feature either through the portal or via PowerShell scripts. When enabled, the extension will configure and attach a .NET Application Insights agent to your application runtime so that application-level logs, metrics, and traces flow into your Application Insights resource. Armed with application-level signals, you will be able to understand how your .NET application is performing and more easily determine the cause of any incidents.
This release simplifies the steps required to enable application monitoring compared to previously available options: SDK-based instrumentation via the application insights SDK or Azure Monitor application insights agent for on-prem servers. The first option required customers to modify their code, while the second option, designed for on-prem environments, required configuration steps or manual installation procedures. Last but not least, this extension makes it possible to enable Application Insights monitoring on VM Scale Sets without advanced PowerShell scripts.
Enabling the Extension
Open Azure Portal and go to the Application Insights menu item.
- Go to Azure portal and navigate to your Application Insights resource and copy your connection string to the clipboard.
- Navigate to your virtual machine, open the "Extensions + applications" blade under the "Settings" section in the left side navigation menu, and Click “+ Add”
- Select the "Application Insights Agent" card, and click "Next"
- Paste the connection string you copied at step 1 and click "Review + Create"
Further instructions and sample PowerShell scripts for enabling this feature are available in our onboarding guide