Keep track of the published APIs in Azure API Management

Monitoring published APIs in Azure API Management (APIM) is crucial for ensuring the health, performance, and security of your APIs. Azure APIM provides built-in monitoring and analytics capabilities to help you track API usage, identify issues, and optimize performance.

In this explanation, I’ll guide you through the process of monitoring published APIs in Azure APIM. I’ll walk you through the steps and concepts using a hypothetical example.

Steps to Monitor Published APIs in Azure APIM

1. Prerequisites

• An Azure account (you can create a free account at azure.com).
• An Azure API Management instance with at least one published API.

2. Access Azure API Management

1. Log in to the Azure Portal.
2. Navigate to your API Management instance.

3. Use the Built-in Monitoring Dashboard

Azure APIM provides a built-in monitoring dashboard that gives you insights into API usage, latency, errors, and more.

1. In your APIM instance, go to the Monitoring section in the left-hand menu.
2. Explore the following tabs:
   • Overview: Provides a high-level summary of API requests, latency, and errors.
   • API Calls: Shows detailed metrics for API calls, including successful and failed requests.
   • Latency: Displays the response time for your APIs.
   • Errors: Highlights any errors or failures in API requests.

4. Enable Azure Monitor Integration

For more advanced monitoring, you can integrate Azure APIM with Azure Monitor.

1. Go to your APIM instance in the Azure Portal.
2. Navigate to Diagnostic settings under the Monitoring section.
3. Add a new diagnostic setting to send logs and metrics to:
   • Log Analytics: For querying and analyzing logs.
   • Azure Storage: For long-term retention.
   • Event Hub: For real-time streaming.

5. Use Log Analytics for Advanced Insights

If you enabled Log Analytics, you can write custom queries to analyze API performance and usage.

1. Go to Log Analytics in the Azure Portal.
2. Write a query to analyze API requests. For example:

   AzureDiagnostics
   | where ResourceProvider == "MICROSOFT.APIMANAGEMENT"
   | summarize TotalRequests = count() by bin(TimeGenerated, 1h)

   This query shows the total number of API requests per hour.

6. Set Up Alerts

You can configure alerts to notify you when specific conditions are met, such as high latency or a spike in errors.

1. Go to Alerts in your APIM instance.
2. Create a new alert rule based on metrics like:
   • Total Requests
   • Failed Requests
   • Latency
3. Configure the action group to send notifications via email, SMS, or other channels.

7. Use Application Insights (Optional)

For even deeper insights, you can integrate Azure APIM with Application Insights.

1. Go to your APIM instance and navigate to Settings > Application Insights.
2. Enable Application Insights and link it to your APIM instance.
3. Use Application Insights to monitor dependencies, exceptions, and performance.

Example Scenario

Let’s say you have an API called weather-api published in Azure APIM. You want to monitor its usage and performance.

1. Go to the Monitoring section in your APIM instance.
2. Check the API Calls tab to see how many requests weather-api has received.
3. Use the Latency tab to ensure the response time is within acceptable limits.
4. Set up an alert to notify you if the error rate exceeds 5%.