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Monitor Azure Synapse Analytics

  • Article

This article describes:

  • The types of monitoring data you can collect for this service.
  • Ways to analyze that data.

Note

If you're already familiar with this service and/or Azure Monitor and just want to know how to analyze monitoring data, see the Analyze section near the end of this article.

When you have critical applications and business processes that rely on Azure resources, you need to monitor and get alerts for your system. The Azure Monitor service collects and aggregates metrics and logs from every component of your system. Azure Monitor provides you with a view of availability, performance, and resilience, and notifies you of issues. You can use the Azure portal, PowerShell, Azure CLI, REST API, or client libraries to set up and view monitoring data.

Synapse Analytics monitoring options

You can collect and analyze metrics and logs for Azure Synapse Analytics built-in and serverless SQL pools, dedicated SQL pools, Azure Spark pools, and Data Explorer pools (preview). You can monitor current and historical activities for SQL, Apache Spark, pipelines and triggers, and integration runtimes.

There are several ways to monitor activities in your Synapse Analytics workspace.

Synapse Studio

Open Synapse Studio and navigate to the Monitor hub to see a history of all the activities in the workspace and which ones are active.

  • Under Integration, you can monitor pipelines, triggers, and integration runtimes.
  • Under Activities, you can monitor Spark and SQL activities.

For more information about monitoring in Synapse Studio, see Monitor your Synapse Workspace.

DMVs and Query Store

To programmatically monitor Synapse SQL via T-SQL, Synapse Analytics provides a set of Dynamic Management Views (DMVs). These views are useful to troubleshoot and identify performance bottlenecks with your workload. For more information, see DMVs and Monitor your Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool workload using DMVs. For the list of DMVs that apply to Synapse SQL, see Dedicated SQL pool Dynamic Management Views (DMVs).

Query Store is a set of internal stores and DMVs that provide insight on query plan choice and performance. Query Store simplifies performance troubleshooting by helping find performance differences caused by query plan changes. For more information about enabling and using Query Store on Synapse Analytics databases, see Query Store.

Azure portal

You can monitor Synapse Analytics workspaces and pools directly from their Azure portal pages. On the left sidebar menu, you can access the Azure Activity log, or select Alerts, Metrics, Diagnostic settings, Logs, or Advisor recommendations from the Monitoring section. This article provides more details about these options.

Resource types

Azure uses the concept of resource types and IDs to identify everything in a subscription. Azure Monitor similarly organizes core monitoring data into metrics and logs based on resource types, also called namespaces. Different metrics and logs are available for different resource types. Your service might be associated with more than one resource type.

Resource types are also part of the resource IDs for every resource running in Azure. For example, one resource type for a virtual machine is Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines. For a list of services and their associated resource types, see Resource providers.

The resource types for Synapse Analytics include:

  • Microsoft.Synapse/workspaces
  • Microsoft.Synapse/workspaces/bigDataPools
  • Microsoft.Synapse/workspaces/kustoPools
  • Microsoft.Synapse/workspaces/scopePools
  • Microsoft.Synapse/workspaces/sqlPools

For more information about the resource types for Azure Synapse Analytics, see Azure Synapse Analytics monitoring data reference.

Data storage

For Azure Monitor:

  • Metrics data is stored in the Azure Monitor metrics database.
  • Log data is stored in the Azure Monitor logs store. Log Analytics is a tool in the Azure portal that can query this store.
  • The Azure activity log is a separate store with its own interface in the Azure portal.

You can optionally route metric and activity log data to the Azure Monitor logs store. You can then use Log Analytics to query the data and correlate it with other log data.

Many services can use diagnostic settings to send metric and log data to other storage locations outside Azure Monitor. Examples include Azure Storage, hosted partner systems, and non-Azure partner systems, by using Event Hubs.

For detailed information on how Azure Monitor stores data, see Azure Monitor data platform.

Synapse Analytics supports storing monitoring data in Azure Storage or Azure Data Lake Storage Gen 2.

Azure Monitor platform metrics

Azure Monitor provides platform metrics for most services. These metrics are:

  • Individually defined for each namespace.
  • Stored in the Azure Monitor time-series metrics database.
  • Lightweight and capable of supporting near real-time alerting.
  • Used to track the performance of a resource over time.

Collection: Azure Monitor collects platform metrics automatically. No configuration is required.

Routing: You can also usually route platform metrics to Azure Monitor Logs / Log Analytics so you can query them with other log data. For more information, see the Metrics diagnostic setting. For how to configure diagnostic settings for a service, see Create diagnostic settings in Azure Monitor.

For a list of all metrics it's possible to gather for all resources in Azure Monitor, see Supported metrics in Azure Monitor.

For lists of available platform metrics for Synapse Analytics, see Synapse Analytics monitoring data reference.

In addition to Log Analytics, Synapse Analytics Apache Spark pools support Prometheus server metrics and Grafana dashboards. For more information, see Monitor Apache Spark Applications metrics with Prometheus and Grafana and Collect Apache Spark applications metrics using Prometheus APIs.

Azure Monitor resource logs

Resource logs provide insight into operations that were done by an Azure resource. Logs are generated automatically, but you must route them to Azure Monitor logs to save or query them. Logs are organized in categories. A given namespace might have multiple resource log categories.

Collection: Resource logs aren't collected and stored until you create a diagnostic setting and route the logs to one or more locations. When you create a diagnostic setting, you specify which categories of logs to collect. There are multiple ways to create and maintain diagnostic settings, including the Azure portal, programmatically, and though Azure Policy.

Routing: The suggested default is to route resource logs to Azure Monitor Logs so you can query them with other log data. Other locations such as Azure Storage, Azure Event Hubs, and certain Microsoft monitoring partners are also available. For more information, see Azure resource logs and Resource log destinations.

For detailed information about collecting, storing, and routing resource logs, see Diagnostic settings in Azure Monitor.

For a list of all available resource log categories in Azure Monitor, see Supported resource logs in Azure Monitor.

All resource logs in Azure Monitor have the same header fields, followed by service-specific fields. The common schema is outlined in Azure Monitor resource log schema.

For the available resource log categories, their associated Log Analytics tables, and the log schemas for Synapse Analytics, see Synapse Analytics monitoring data reference.

Azure activity log

The activity log contains subscription-level events that track operations for each Azure resource as seen from outside that resource; for example, creating a new resource or starting a virtual machine.

Collection: Activity log events are automatically generated and collected in a separate store for viewing in the Azure portal.

Routing: You can send activity log data to Azure Monitor Logs so you can analyze it alongside other log data. Other locations such as Azure Storage, Azure Event Hubs, and certain Microsoft monitoring partners are also available. For more information on how to route the activity log, see Overview of the Azure activity log.

Analyze monitoring data

There are many tools for analyzing monitoring data.

Azure Monitor tools

Azure Monitor supports the following basic tools:

Tools that allow more complex visualization include:

  • Dashboards that let you combine different kinds of data into a single pane in the Azure portal.
  • Workbooks, customizable reports that you can create in the Azure portal. Workbooks can include text, metrics, and log queries.
  • Grafana, an open platform tool that excels in operational dashboards. You can use Grafana to create dashboards that include data from multiple sources other than Azure Monitor.
  • Power BI, a business analytics service that provides interactive visualizations across various data sources. You can configure Power BI to automatically import log data from Azure Monitor to take advantage of these visualizations.

In addition to the basic tools, Synapse Analytics supports Query Store, DMVs, or Azure Data Explorer to analyze query history and performance. For a comparison of these analytics methods, see Historical query storage and analysis in Azure Synapse Analytics.

Azure Monitor export tools

You can get data out of Azure Monitor into other tools by using the following methods:

To get started with the REST API for Azure Monitor, see Azure monitoring REST API walkthrough.

Kusto queries

You can analyze monitoring data in the Azure Monitor Logs / Log Analytics store by using the Kusto query language (KQL).

Important

When you select Logs from the service's menu in the portal, Log Analytics opens with the query scope set to the current service. This scope means that log queries will only include data from that type of resource. If you want to run a query that includes data from other Azure services, select Logs from the Azure Monitor menu. See Log query scope and time range in Azure Monitor Log Analytics for details.

For a list of common queries for any service, see the Log Analytics queries interface.

Sample queries

Activity Log query for failed operations: Lists all reports of failed operations over the past hour.

AzureActivity 
| where TimeGenerated > ago(1h)  
| where ActivityStatus == "Failed"

Synapse Link table fail events: Displays failed Synapse Link table events.

SynapseLinkEvent
| where OperationName == "TableFail"
| limit 100

Alerts

Azure Monitor alerts proactively notify you when specific conditions are found in your monitoring data. Alerts allow you to identify and address issues in your system before your customers notice them. For more information, see Azure Monitor alerts.

There are many sources of common alerts for Azure resources. For examples of common alerts for Azure resources, see Sample log alert queries. The Azure Monitor Baseline Alerts (AMBA) site provides a semi-automated method of implementing important platform metric alerts, dashboards, and guidelines. The site applies to a continually expanding subset of Azure services, including all services that are part of the Azure Landing Zone (ALZ).

The common alert schema standardizes the consumption of Azure Monitor alert notifications. For more information, see Common alert schema.

Types of alerts

You can alert on any metric or log data source in the Azure Monitor data platform. There are many different types of alerts depending on the services you're monitoring and the monitoring data you're collecting. Different types of alerts have various benefits and drawbacks. For more information, see Choose the right monitoring alert type.

The following list describes the types of Azure Monitor alerts you can create:

  • Metric alerts evaluate resource metrics at regular intervals. Metrics can be platform metrics, custom metrics, logs from Azure Monitor converted to metrics, or Application Insights metrics. Metric alerts can also apply multiple conditions and dynamic thresholds.
  • Log alerts allow users to use a Log Analytics query to evaluate resource logs at a predefined frequency.
  • Activity log alerts trigger when a new activity log event occurs that matches defined conditions. Resource Health alerts and Service Health alerts are activity log alerts that report on your service and resource health.

Some Azure services also support smart detection alerts, Prometheus alerts, or recommended alert rules.

For some services, you can monitor at scale by applying the same metric alert rule to multiple resources of the same type that exist in the same Azure region. Individual notifications are sent for each monitored resource. For supported Azure services and clouds, see Monitor multiple resources with one alert rule.

Synapse Analytics alert rules

The following table lists some suggested alerts for Synapse Analytics. These alerts are just examples. You can set alerts for any metric, log entry, or activity log entry listed in the Synapse Analytics monitoring data reference.

Alert type Condition Description
Metric TempDB 75% Maximum local tempdb used percentage greater than or equal to 75% of threshold value
Metric Data Warehouse Unit (DWU) Usage near 100% Average DWU used percentage greater than 95% for 1 hour
Log Analytics SynapseSqlPoolRequestSteps ShuffleMoveOperation over 10 million rows

For more details about creating these and other recommended alert rules, see Create alerts for your Synapse Dedicated SQL Pool.

Advisor recommendations

For some services, if critical conditions or imminent changes occur during resource operations, an alert displays on the service Overview page in the portal. You can find more information and recommended fixes for the alert in Advisor recommendations under Monitoring in the left menu. During normal operations, no advisor recommendations display.

For more information on Azure Advisor, see Azure Advisor overview.

Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool provides Azure Advisor recommendations to ensure your data warehouse workload is consistently optimized for performance. For more information, see Azure Advisor recommendations for dedicated SQL pool in Azure Synapse Analytics.

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