Monitor container resources in Azure Container Instances

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Azure Monitor provides insight into the compute resources used by your containers instances. This resource usage data helps you determine the best resource settings for your container groups. Azure Monitor also provides metrics that track network activity in your container instances.

This document details gathering Azure Monitor metrics for container instances using both the Azure portal and Azure CLI.

Important

Azure Monitor metrics in Azure Container Instances are currently in preview, and some limitations apply. Previews are made available to you on the condition that you agree to the supplemental terms of use. Some aspects of this feature may change prior to general availability (GA).

Preview limitations

At this time, Azure Monitor metrics are only available for Linux containers.

Available metrics

Azure Monitor provides the following metrics for Azure Container Instances. These metrics are available for a container group and individual containers. By default, the metrics are aggregated as averages.

  • CPU Usage measured in millicores.
    • One millicore is 1/1000th of a CPU core, so 500 millicores represents usage of 0.5 CPU core.
  • Memory Usage in bytes
  • Network bytes received per second
  • Network bytes transmitted per second

Get metrics - Azure portal

When a container group is created, Azure Monitor data is available in the Azure portal. To see metrics for a container group, go to the Overview page for the container group. Here you can see pre-created charts for each of the available metrics.

dual-chart

In a container group that contains multiple containers, use a dimension to display metrics by container. To create a chart with individual container metrics, perform the following steps:

  1. In the Overview page, select one of the metric charts, such as CPU.

  2. Select the Apply splitting button, and select Container Name.

    Screen capture shows the metrics for a container instance with Apply splitting selected and Container Name selected.

Get metrics - Azure CLI

Metrics for container instances can also be gathered using the Azure CLI. First, get the ID of the container group using the following command. Replace <resource-group> with your resource group name and <container-group> with the name of your container group.

CONTAINER_GROUP=$(az container show --resource-group <resource-group> --name <container-group> --query id --output tsv)

Use the following command to get CPU usage metrics.

az monitor metrics list --resource $CONTAINER_GROUP --metric CPUUsage --output table

Timestamp            Name       Average
------------------- ---------  ---------
2020-12-17 23:34:00  CPU Usage
. . .
2020-12-18 00:25:00  CPU Usage
2020-12-18 00:26:00  CPU Usage  0.4
2020-12-18 00:27:00  CPU Usage  0.0

Change the value of the --metric parameter in the command to get other supported metrics. For example, use the following command to get memory usage metrics.

az monitor metrics list --resource $CONTAINER_GROUP --metric MemoryUsage --output table

Timestamp            Name          Average
-------------------  ------------  ----------
2019-04-23 22:59:00  Memory Usage
2019-04-23 23:00:00  Memory Usage
2019-04-23 23:01:00  Memory Usage  0.0
2019-04-23 23:02:00  Memory Usage  8859648.0
2019-04-23 23:03:00  Memory Usage  9181184.0
2019-04-23 23:04:00  Memory Usage  9580544.0
2019-04-23 23:05:00  Memory Usage  10280960.0
2019-04-23 23:06:00  Memory Usage  7815168.0
2019-04-23 23:07:00  Memory Usage  7739392.0
2019-04-23 23:08:00  Memory Usage  8212480.0
2019-04-23 23:09:00  Memory Usage  8159232.0
2019-04-23 23:10:00  Memory Usage  8093696.0

For a multi-container group, the containerName dimension can be added to return metrics per container.

az monitor metrics list --resource $CONTAINER_GROUP --metric MemoryUsage --dimension containerName --output table

Timestamp            Name          Containername             Average
-------------------  ------------  --------------------  -----------
2019-04-23 22:59:00  Memory Usage  aci-tutorial-app
2019-04-23 23:00:00  Memory Usage  aci-tutorial-app
2019-04-23 23:01:00  Memory Usage  aci-tutorial-app      0.0
2019-04-23 23:02:00  Memory Usage  aci-tutorial-app      16834560.0
2019-04-23 23:03:00  Memory Usage  aci-tutorial-app      17534976.0
2019-04-23 23:04:00  Memory Usage  aci-tutorial-app      18329600.0
2019-04-23 23:05:00  Memory Usage  aci-tutorial-app      19742720.0
2019-04-23 23:06:00  Memory Usage  aci-tutorial-app      14786560.0
2019-04-23 23:07:00  Memory Usage  aci-tutorial-app      14651392.0
2019-04-23 23:08:00  Memory Usage  aci-tutorial-app      15470592.0
2019-04-23 23:09:00  Memory Usage  aci-tutorial-app      15450112.0
2019-04-23 23:10:00  Memory Usage  aci-tutorial-app      15339520.0
2019-04-23 22:59:00  Memory Usage  aci-tutorial-sidecar
2019-04-23 23:00:00  Memory Usage  aci-tutorial-sidecar
2019-04-23 23:01:00  Memory Usage  aci-tutorial-sidecar  0.0
2019-04-23 23:02:00  Memory Usage  aci-tutorial-sidecar  884736.0
2019-04-23 23:03:00  Memory Usage  aci-tutorial-sidecar  827392.0
2019-04-23 23:04:00  Memory Usage  aci-tutorial-sidecar  831488.0
2019-04-23 23:05:00  Memory Usage  aci-tutorial-sidecar  819200.0
2019-04-23 23:06:00  Memory Usage  aci-tutorial-sidecar  843776.0
2019-04-23 23:07:00  Memory Usage  aci-tutorial-sidecar  827392.0
2019-04-23 23:08:00  Memory Usage  aci-tutorial-sidecar  954368.0
2019-04-23 23:09:00  Memory Usage  aci-tutorial-sidecar  868352.0
2019-04-23 23:10:00  Memory Usage  aci-tutorial-sidecar  847872.0

Next steps

Learn more about Azure Monitoring at the Azure Monitoring overview.

Learn how to create metric alerts to get notified when a metric for Azure Container Instances crosses a threshold.