Intelligent Health Checks - Azure

Gremlin supports Intelligent Health Checks for Azure services. When enabled, Gremlin automatically creates a set of Health Checks for your Azure service, monitors key metrics (request rate, throughput, and latency), and sets error thresholds using the service’s baseline performance. This lets you create Health Checks and start testing services without needing an observability tool.

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How it works

Gremlin provides an Azure Resource Manager (ARM) template that lets you determine which resource groups to delegate (e.g. grant access) to Gremlin. You will need to deploy an ARM template for each Azure subscription you want to monitor using Intelligent Health Checks, then map your Gremlin service to one or more resources in the following Azure services:

• Application Gateway
• Front Door
• App Service
• Container Apps
• Application Insights

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Enabling Azure Intelligent Health Checks

Before authenticating, ensure that your Azure account has a role with the following permissions, such as Owner:

• Microsoft.Authorization/roleAssignments/read: used to access metrics.
• Microsoft.Authorization/roleAssignments/write: used to create a delegation that allows Gremlin to access metrics.
• Microsoft.Authorization/roleAssignments/delete: used to remove a delegation if you uninstall Gremlin from your Azure environment.

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Authenticating Gremlin to Azure

To authenticate Gremlin to Azure:

1. Open the Gremlin web app and navigate to the service that you want to add Intelligent Health Checks to.
2. On the Service’s overview page, click Settings > Health Checks.
3. Under Intelligent Health Checks, click on the Type drop-down box, select Azure, and click + Add.
4. Select Add a new Subscription ID.
   
   1. Outside of Gremlin, log into the Azure account you want to use to authenticate Gremlin. Your account must have a role with the permissions listed above.
   2. Click Deploy to Azure. Gremlin will redirect you to the Azure portal to continue setup.
   3. Select the Azure Subscription and Region where your application(s) is deployed.
   4. Optionally, change the name and description of the deployment using the MSP Offer Name and MSP Offer Description text boxes.
   5. In Resource Groups, enter a JSON-formatted array containing the name(s) of the resource group(s) that your applications are running in. For example: [ "resourceGroup1", "resourceGroup2" ].
   6. Click Next to review the template, then click Create to start the deployment.
   7. Once the deployment is finished, click the Go to subscription button.
   8. On the subscription page, copy the value shown in the Subscription ID field.
5. Back in the Gremlin web app, paste the subscription ID into the Subscription ID box. Then, click Next.

Next, you will need to map your service(s) to an Azure resource ID.

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Mapping your service to an Azure resource

After authenticating Gremlin to Azure, you will need to map your Gremlin services to an Azure resource ID. This is necessary so Gremlin knows which Azure resource(s) to monitor when testing this service.

To map a service to an Azure resource:

1. Open the service’s Settings page and navigate to Health Checks.
2. Under Intelligent Health Checks, click on the Type field to expand it, select Azure, and click + Add.
3. Select the Subscription ID of the subscription you wish to use (see Authenticating Gremlin to Azure if you haven’t yet authenticated) and click Next.
4. Select the Azure resource that corresponds to this service by clicking on the checkbox next to its name. You can use the search box to filter the list by resource name and use the arrows at the bottom of the table to navigate between pages. When you’ve selected the desired resource, click Next.

Check the box next to Use Azure Intelligent Health Checks for this service, then click Save.