Manage Application Insights components by using Azure CLI

Article
2022-11-18

In Azure Monitor, components are independently deployable parts of your distributed or microservices application. Use these Azure CLI commands to manage components in Application Insights.

The examples in this article do the following management tasks:

Create a component.
Connect a component to a webapp.
Link a component to a storage account with a component.
Create a continuous export configuration for a component.

Prerequisites

You can use the local Azure CLI.

If you prefer, install the Azure CLI to run CLI reference commands.
Local Azure CLI, see how to install the Azure CLI. If you're running on Windows or macOS, consider running Azure CLI in a Docker container. For more information, see How to run the Azure CLI in a Docker container.
- Sign in to the Azure CLI by using the az login command. To finish the authentication process, follow the steps displayed in your terminal. For other sign-in options, see Sign in with the Azure CLI.
- When you're prompted, install the Azure CLI extension on first use. For more information about extensions, see Use extensions with the Azure CLI.
- Run az version to find the version and dependent libraries that are installed. To upgrade to the latest version, run az upgrade.

Create a component

If you don't already have a resource group and workspace, create them by using az group create and az monitor log-analytics workspace create:

az group create --name ContosoAppInsightRG --location chinanorth2
az monitor log-analytics workspace create --resource-group ContosoAppInsightRG \
   --workspace-name AppInWorkspace

To create a component, run the az monitor app-insights component create command. The az monitor app-insights component show command displays the component.

az monitor app-insights component create --resource-group ContosoAppInsightRG \
   --app ContosoApp --location chinanorth2 --kind web --application-type web \
   --retention-time 120
az monitor app-insights component show --resource-group ContosoAppInsightRG --app ContosoApp

Connect a webapp

This example connects your component to a webapp. You can create a webapp by using the az appservice plan create and az webapp create commands:

az appservice plan create --resource-group ContosoAppInsightRG --name ContosoAppService
az webapp create --resource-group ContosoAppInsightRG --name ContosoApp \
   --plan ContosoAppService --name ContosoApp8765

Run the az monitor app-insights component connect-webapp command to connect your component to the webapp:

az monitor app-insights component connect-webapp --resource-group ContosoAppInsightRG \
   --app ContosoApp --web-app ContosoApp8765 --enable-debugger false --enable-profiler false

You can instead connect to an Azure function by using the az monitor app-insights component connect-function command.

Link a component to storage

You can link a component to a storage account. To create a storage account, use the az storage account create command:

az storage account create --resource-group ContosoAppInsightRG \
   --name contosolinkedstorage --location chinanorth2 --sku Standard_LRS

To link your component to the storage account, run the az monitor app-insights component linked-storage link command. You can see the existing links by using the az monitor app-insights component linked-storage show command:

az monitor app-insights component linked-storage link  --resource-group ContosoAppInsightRG \
   --app ContosoApp --storage-account contosolinkedstorage
az monitor app-insights component linked-storage show --resource-group ContosoAppInsightRG \
   --app ContosoApp

To unlink the storage, run the az monitor app-insights component linked-storage unlink command:

az monitor app-insights component linked-storage unlink  \
   --resource-group ContosoAppInsightRG --app ContosoApp

Set up continuous export

Continuous export saves events from Application Insights portal in a storage container in JSON format.

Note

Continuous export is only supported for classic Application Insights resources. Workspace-based Application Insights resources must use diagnostic settings.

To create a storage container, run the az storage container create command.

az storage container create --name contosostoragecontainer --account-name contosolinkedstorage \
   --public-access blob

You need access for the container to be write only. Run the az storage container policy create cmdlet:

az storage container policy create --container-name contosostoragecontainer \
   --account-name contosolinkedstorage --name WAccessPolicy --permissions w

Create an SAS key by using the az storage container generate-sas command. Be sure to use the --output tsv parameter value to save the key without unwanted formatting like quotation marks. For more information, see Use Azure CLI effectively.

containersas=$(az storage container generate-sas --name contosostoragecontainer \
   --account-name contosolinkedstorage --permissions w --output tsv)

To create a continuous export, run the az monitor app-insights component continues-export create command:

az monitor app-insights component continues-export create --resource-group ContosoAppInsightRG \
   --app ContosoApp --record-types Event --dest-account contosolinkedstorage \
   --dest-container contosostoragecontainer --dest-sub-id 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 \
   --dest-sas $containersas

You can delete a configured continuous export by using the az monitor app-insights component continues-export delete command:

az monitor app-insights component continues-export list \
   --resource-group ContosoAppInsightRG --app ContosoApp
az monitor app-insights component continues-export delete \
   --resource-group ContosoAppInsightRG --app ContosoApp --id abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz=

Clean up deployment

If you created a resource group to test these commands, you can remove the resource group and all its contents by using the az group delete command:

az group delete --name ContosoAppInsightRG

Azure CLI commands used in this article

Next steps

Azure Monitor CLI samples

Find and diagnose performance issues