Introduction
In cloud-based systems, keeping resources healthy and responsive is essential. Azure Alerts offer a smart way to stay ahead of performance issues by continuously monitoring workloads and notifying you when something needs attention. With the right alert configuration, your team can react swiftly to potential disruptions—minimizing downtime and maximizing efficiency.
This guide walks you through configuring alerts for Azure compute services, with a focus on tracking virtual machine (VM) performance and ensuring notifications reach the right people at the right time.
Project Goals
Here’s what we aim to achieve:
Set up an action group that sends email notifications when alerts are triggered.
Create a performance alert for VM CPU usage to monitor system health in real time.
Step 1: Create an Action Group for Email Notifications
Think of this as assigning your cloud emergency contacts. When Azure detects a problem, it automatically sends an email to the designated recipients—so they can jump in and fix things fast.
Setting up an action group ensures that alerts don’t just sit in a dashboard—they reach the people who can act on them.
In the Azure Portal Search Bar, enter Monitor and select Monitor from the list of results.
Select Alerts in the navigation menu.
Choose Action Groups.
On the Action Groups page, choose Create.
On the Basics page of the Create Action Group wizard, configure the following settings and choose Next.
Property Value
Subscription Your subscription
Resource Group NK_RG
Region Global
Action group name NotifyCPU
Display Name NotifyCPU
On the Notifications page, set the notification type to Email/SMS message/Push/Voice and the Name to NotificationEmail. Choose the Edit (pencil) icon.
On the Email/SMS message/Push/Voice enable the email checkbox and enter the address koladeadeyemo99@gmail.com. Choose OK.
Choose Review and Create. Choose Create.
Choose Create.
Action group as been successfully created
Notification email sent to the person added under the action group
Step 2 Create an alert for virtual machine CPU utilization
This means: “Tell Azure to watch the computer’s brain (CPU).”
If the CPU is working too hard (too much usage), Azure will raise a flag and send the alert to the action group (the people you set up in Task 1). This helps you know early when your virtual machine is struggling, so you can fix it before it crashes or slows down.
In the Azure Portal Search Bar, enter Resource Group select NK_RG from the list of results.
Select NK_RG from the list of results.
From the list of items in the resource group, choose DynamicVm.
On the DynamicVm properties page, choose Alerts under Monitoring.
On the Alerts page, choose Create and then choose Alert rule.
On the Condition page of the Create an Alert Rule wizard, set the Signal name to Percentage CPU. Use the default settings and choose Next.
On the Actions page, choose Select Action Group.
On the Select Action Groups page, choose NotifyCPU and choose Select.
On the Details page enter the Alert rule name HighCPU. Choose Review and Create. choose Create.
Choose Create
Alert rule as been created successfully
Conclusion
This project showcased how to effectively set up alerts in Microsoft Azure to strengthen your system’s monitoring and response strategy. By creating an action group, we ensured that key team members are promptly notified when issues arise. Configuring a CPU utilization alert provided real-time visibility into virtual machine performance, helping to detect and address bottlenecks before they escalate.
Ultimately, this approach reinforces the value of proactive monitoring—keeping systems reliable, minimizing downtime, and supporting seamless business operations.
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