In earlier versions of the Windows Azure SDK, the default Windows Azure Diagnostics string provided by the Visual Studio template in the service configuration file was named DiagnosticsConnectionString . Later Windows Azure SDKs have changed this name to Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString...

Recently, I had a colleague ask me how to groom diagnostic data collected in Windows Azure storage from Windows Azure applications. Since he is using SCOM, there is a ready answer for configuring regular grooming of Windows Azure diagnostic data, thus saving on storage consumption costs and preventing...

Through rules, SCOM provides a powerful system for capturing specific events from the event log of Windows Azure applications and notifying various groups of critical events through SCOM alerts. Events are stored in the SCOM database, which can be analyzed in views and reports. This walkthrough will...

In previous blog posts I demonstrated how to setup your Azure performance counters, how to install SCOM 2007 R2 along with the Windows Azure Management Pack, and how to configure Azure Diagnostics performance counter monitoring in SCOM 2007 R2. In this post, I will pick up where I left off to demonstrate...

In my last post , I provided a primer on installing SCOM 2007 R2 along with the Azure Management Pack (which is still currently in Release Candidate status). In the post before that, I showed you how to setup the performance counters in your web and worker roles in Visual Studio 2010 so you could generate...

You can find the full procedures in the SCOM 2007 R2 Deployment Guide and Azure Management Pack documentation, but I am providing this to give you visuals with some “hard won” experience that augments those instructions and provides a bit more hand-holding. The first order of business will...

For those wondering how to setup performance counters on your web or worker roles when you deploy your Azure applications, wonder no more, as this post will help to get you started. Azure does not automatically setup performance counters for you from your Azure roles.  You must set them up yourself...

I recently had a customer migrating an application to Azure whose policy is to send well-formed XML with detailed error information to the event log whenever errors are detected in their applications. The customer was getting errors when including XML namespaces in their detailed event log entries. For...