Enable Guest-Level Diagnostics for Virtual Machines

01 Sign in to Azure Management Console.

02 Navigate to All resources blade at https://portal.azure.com/#blade/HubsExtension/BrowseAll to access all your Microsoft Azure resources.

03 Choose the Azure subscription that you want to access from the Subscription filter box.

04 From the Type filter box, select Virtual machine to list the virtual machines launched within the selected subscription.

05 Click on the name of the virtual machine (VM) that you want to examine.

06 In the navigation panel, under Monitoring, select Diagnostic settings to access the Guest-Level Diagnostics feature configuration and metrics, implemented for the selected VM. If there are no configuration details listed and no metrics, instead the Enable guest-level monitoring button is displayed, the Guest-Level Diagnostics feature is not enabled for the selected Microsoft Azure virtual machine.

07 Repeat step no. 5 and 6 for each Azure virtual machine available in the selected subscription.

08 Repeat steps no. 3 – 7 for each subscription created in your Microsoft Azure cloud account.

01 Run vm list command (Windows/macOS/Linux) using custom query filters to list the ID of each virtual machine (VM) deployed in the current Azure subscription:

az vm list
    --query '[*].id'

02 The command output should return the requested Azure virtual machine ID(s):

[
"/subscriptions/abcdabcd-1234-abcd-1234-abcd1234abcd/resourceGroups/CLOUD-SHELL-STORAGE-WESTEUROPE/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/cc-internal-app-vm",
"/subscriptions/abcdabcd-1234-abcd-1234-abcd1234abcd/resourceGroups/CLOUD-SHELL-STORAGE-WESTEUROPE/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/cc-warehouse-app-vm"
]

03 Run vm show command (Windows/macOS/Linux) using the ID of the Azure virtual machine that you want to examine as identifier parameter, to describe the Guest-Level Diagnostics feature configuration and metrics set for the selected VM:

az vm show
    --ids "/subscriptions/abcdabcd-1234-abcd-1234-abcd1234abcd/resourceGroups/CLOUD-SHELL-STORAGE-WESTEUROPE/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/cc-internal-app-vm"
    --query '{"GuestLevelDiagnosticsConfig": resources[*].settings.ladCfg.diagnosticMonitorConfiguration}'

04 The command output should return the requested feature configuration information:

{
  "GuestLevelDiagnosticsConfig": []
}

05 Repeat step no. 3 and 4 for every Azure virtual machine available in the current subscription.

06 Repeat steps no. 1 – 5 for each subscription created in your Microsoft Azure cloud account.

01 Sign in to Azure Management Console.

02 Navigate to All resources blade at https://portal.azure.com/#blade/HubsExtension/BrowseAll to access all your Microsoft Azure resources.

03 Choose the Azure subscription that you want to access from the Subscription filter box.

04 From the Type filter box, select Virtual machine to show the virtual machines available in the selected subscription.

05 Click on the name of the virtual machine (VM) that you want to reconfigure (see Audit section part I to identify the right resource).

06 In the navigation panel, under Monitoring, select Diagnostic settings to access the Guest-Level Diagnostics feature page.

07 On the Diagnostic settings page, perform the following commands:

1. Select the Overview tab available under the dashboard top menu.
2. Choose the name of the storage account where the diagnostic data will be sent from Pick a storage account dropdown list.
3. Click Enable guest-level monitoring button to enable the Guest-Level Diagnostics feature for the selected Azure virtual machine. It can take up to 10 minutes for the feature to become active. During this time a status message, i.e. "Updating diagnostic settings...", will be displayed on the settings page. Once Guest-Level Diagnostics is enabled, click Save to save the default configuration set for the feature by the Azure Monitoring service.

08 Repeat steps no. 5 – 8 to enable Guest-Level Diagnostics feature for other Azure virtual machines provisioned in the selected subscription.

09 Repeat steps no. 3 – 9 for each subscription created in your Microsoft Azure cloud account.

01 Run storage account list command (Windows/macOS/Linux) using custom query filters to describe the identifier for each storage account available in the current Azure subscription:

az storage account list
    --query '[*].name'

02 The command output should return the requested identifiers/names. The storage account resource names will be used later to enable Guest-Level Diagnostics for your virtual machines:

[
  "abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234",
  "abcdabcdabcd123412341234"
]

03 Run vm diagnostics get-default-config command (Windows/macOS/Linux) using the ID of the virtual machine that you want to reconfigure (see Audit section part II to identify the right resource) and the name of the storage account that will hold the diagnostic data (returned at the previous step) as identifier parameters, to obtain the default diagnostic configuration settings that the Azure Monitoring service provides for the selected VM and save them to a variable named "$default_config" (the command does not return an output):

default_config=$(az vm diagnostics get-default-config \
    | sed "s#__DIAGNOSTIC_STORAGE_ACCOUNT__#abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234#g" \
    | sed "s#__VM_OR_VMSS_RESOURCE_ID__#/subscriptions/abcdabcd-1234-abcd-1234-abcd1234abcd/resourceGroups/CLOUD-SHELL-STORAGE-WESTEUROPE/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/cc-internal-app-vm#g")

04 Run vm diagnostics set command (Windows/macOS/Linux) using the ID of the virtual machine that you want to reconfigure as identifier parameter and the variable created at the previous step as value for the --settings parameter, i.e. "$default_config", to enable Guest-Level Diagnostics feature for the selected Azure virtual machine (the command does not produce an output):

az vm diagnostics set
    --ids "/subscriptions/abcdabcd-1234-abcd-1234-abcd1234abcd/resourceGroups/CLOUD-SHELL-STORAGE-WESTEUROPE/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/cc-internal-app-vm"
    --settings "$default_config"

05 Repeat step no. 3 and 4 to enable Guest-Level Diagnostics feature for other Azure virtual machines available in the current subscription.

06 Repeat steps no. 1 – 5 for each subscription created within your Microsoft Azure cloud account.