Migrate to VM insights OpenTelemetry (preview)

2025-10-09

VM insights in Azure Monitor currently uses a Log Analytics workspace to collect client performance data from your virtual machines and to power visualizations in the Azure portal. With the release of OpenTelemetry (OTel) system metrics, VMinsights is being transitioned to a more cost-effective and efficient method of collecting and visualize system-level metrics. This article describes how to get started using OpenTelemetry metrics as your primary visualization tool.

Benefits of OpenTelemetry for VM insights

Benefits of the new OTel-based collection pipeline include the following:

Standard system-level metrics such as CPU, memory, disk I/O, and network errors.
Per-process metrics such as process uptime, memory, and open file descriptors that weren't previously available in Azure Monitor.
Extensibility to non-OS workloads such as MongoDB, Cassandra, and Oracle.
Cross-platform consistency with a unified schema across Linux and Windows.

Prerequisites

Azure VM or Arc-enabled server running an operating system supported by the Azure Monitor agent.
See Manage the Azure Monitor agent for prerequisites related to Azure Monitor agent.
See Azure Monitor agent network configuration for network requirements for the Azure Monitor agent.

Enable OpenTelemetry for VM insights

Note

The Azure portal is currently the only supported method to enable OpenTelemetry for VM insights.

Select a VM in the Azure portal and navigate to the Insights pane under the Monitoring section.
If your VM is already onboarded to VM insights, you'll see a prompt to enable OpenTelemetry.

If your VM isn't onboarded yet, you can enable OpenTelemetry during the onboarding process.
For a VM that hasn't been onboarded yet, you can choose whether to enable the classic log-based metrics, the new OpenTelemetry metrics, or both. For a VM that has already been onboarded, you can only add OpenTelemetry metrics. The option to disable classic log-based metrics isn't currently available. See Disable classic log-based metrics to disable the classic experience.
The Azure Monitor workspace for OTel metrics and the Log Analytics workspace for classic metrics that will be used are displayed. You can change either workspace by selecting Customize infrastructure monitoring. If a workspace doesn't already exist, a default workspace will be created for you. You can also choose to create your own new workspace.

Note

This screen displays the metrics that will be collected, although you can't modify them here. See Customize metric collection.

Visualize OpenTelemetry metrics

When you enable OTel metrics, the VM insights dashboards are updated to use these metrics instead of those stored in Log Analytics workspace. You can do custom analysis of these metrics select the Metrics option from the Azure Monitor workspace to open metrics explorer. See Azure Monitor metrics explorer with PromQL.

Disable classic log-based metrics

If your VM is currently using the classic log-based VM insights experience, then you can choose to stop sending metrics to the Log Analytics workspace to save on ingestion and retention costs. See Disable monitoring of your VMs in VM insights for this process.

Customize metric collection

By default, VM insights collects a core set of metrics at no cost. If you need additional visibility such as per-process performance, logical disk usage, filesystem utilization, or workload-specific metrics, you can extend the collection by updating the Data Collection Rule (DCR) that gets deployed when VM insights with OTel metrics is enabled.

To identify the DCR associated with the VM, open Data Collection Rules from the Monitor menu in the Azure portal. Select the Resources tab and locate your VM.

Click the number in the Data collection rules column to list the DCRs associated with the VM. The OTel DCR will have a name in the form MSVMOtel-<region>-<name>.

See Create data collection rules (DCRs) in Azure Monitor for guidance on how to modify a DCR. The default configuration is shown below. Add any of the metrics listed in Additional metrics to the counterSpecifiers section of the DCR.

{
    "properties": {
        "dataSources": {
            "performanceCountersOTel": [
                {
                    "streams": [
                        "Microsoft-OtelPerfMetrics"
                    ],
                    "samplingFrequencyInSeconds": 60,
                    "counterSpecifiers": [
                        "system.filesystem.usage",
                        "system.filesystem.utilization",
                        "system.disk.io",
                        "system.disk.operation_time",
                        "system.disk.operations",
                        "system.memory.usage",
                        "system.network.io",
                        "system.cpu.time",
                        "system.uptime",
                        "system.network.dropped",
                        "system.network.errors"
                    ],
                    "name": "OtelDataSource"
                }
            ]
        },
        "destinations": {
            "monitoringAccounts": [
                {
                    "accountResourceId": "/subscriptions/my-subscription/resourcegroups/my-resource-group/providers/microsoft.monitor/accounts/my-workspace",
                    "name": "MonitoringAccountDestination"
                }
            ]
        },
        "dataFlows": [
            {
                "streams": [
                    "Microsoft-OtelPerfMetrics"
                ],
                "destinations": [
                    "MonitoringAccountDestination"
                ]
            }
        ]
    }
}

Troubleshooting

The charts are stuck in a loading state
This issue occurs if the network traffic for the Azure Monitor workspace is blocked. This is typically related to network policies such as ad blocking software. To resolve this issue, disable the ad block or allowlist monitor.azure.com traffic and reload the page.

Unable to access Data Collection Rule (DCR)
This error occurs when the user doesn't have permission to view the associated DCR for the VM, or the DCR may have been deleted. To resolve, contact the system administrator or reconfigure OpenTelemetry metrics using the Monitor Settings button in the toolbar.

Data configuration error
This error occurs when the Azure Monitor workspace or DCR has been modified or deleted. Reconfigure OpenTelemetry metrics using the Monitor Settings button in the toolbar.

Access denied
This error occurs when the user's portal token expires or doesn't have permissions to view the associated Azure Monitor workspace. This can typically be resolved by refreshing the browser session or contacting your system administrator to request access. The user needs monitor reader permission, and the resource centric flag should be enabled on the Azure Monitor workspace by the system administrator.

An unknown error occurred
If this error message persists, then contact support to open up a ticket.

Metrics reference

The following tables list the metrics collected by VM insights OpenTelemetry.

Default metrics

The metrics in the following table are collected by default and at no additional cost.

Metric Name	Description
system.uptime	Time since last reboot (in seconds)
system.cpu.time	Total CPU time consumed (user + system + idle), in seconds
system.memory.usage	Memory in use (bytes)
system.network.io	Bytes transmitted/received
system.network.dropped	Dropped packets
system.network.errors	Network errors
system.disk.io	Disk I/O (bytes read/written)
system.disk.operations	Disk operations (read/write counts)
system.filesystem.usage	Filesystem usage in bytes
system.disk.operation_time	Average disk operation time

Additional metrics

The metrics in the following table can be collected by modifying the DCR for the VM as described in Customize metric collection. There is an additional cost to collect these metrics.

Metric Name	Description
system.cpu.utilization	CPU usage %
system.cpu.logical.count	Number of logical processors
system.cpu.physical.count	Number of physical CPUs
system.cpu.frequency	CPU frequency
system.cpu.load_average.1m	System load average (1 min)
system.cpu.load_average.5m	System load average (5 min)
system.cpu.load_average.15m	System load average (15 min)
system.memory.utilization	% memory used
system.memory.limit	Total memory limit
system.memory.page_size	Page size (bytes)
system.linux.memory.available	Available memory
system.linux.memory.dirty	Dirty memory pages
system.paging.faults	Page faults
system.paging.operations	Paging operations (reads/writes)
system.paging.usage	Paging/swap usage (bytes)
system.paging.utilization	% paging/swap used
system.disk.io_time	Time spent doing I/O
system.disk.merged	Number of merged operations
system.disk.pending_operations	Pending I/O operations
system.disk.weighted_io_time	Weighted I/O time (accounts for queue depth)
system.filesystem.utilization	Filesystem usage %
system.filesystem.inodes.usage	Inodes usage
system.network.packets	Packets transmitted/received
system.network.connections	Active network connections
system.network.conntrack.count	Current conntrack table entries
system.network.conntrack.max	Maximum conntrack table size
process.uptime	Process uptime
process.cpu.time	CPU time consumed by process
process.cpu.utilization	CPU usage % per process
process.memory.usage	Memory usage (RSS)
process.memory.virtual	Virtual memory usage
process.memory.utilization	Memory % usage
process.disk.io	Disk I/O (bytes per process)
process.disk.operations	Disk operations per process
process.paging.faults	Process page faults
process.open_file_descriptors	Open file descriptors
process.threads	Number of threads
process.handles	Handles in use (Windows)
process.context_switches	Context switches
process.signals_pending	Pending signals
system.processes.count	Total number of processes
system.processes.created	Processes created

Learn More

Azure Monitor metrics

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