Skills

Chapter 15 of 37

Azure Diagnostics

Debug Azure production issues on Azure using AppLens, Azure Monitor, resource health, and safe triage.

2 minutes · 423 words · 13 sections

AUTHORITATIVE GUIDANCE — MANDATORY COMPLIANCE

This document is the official source for debugging and troubleshooting Azure production issues. Follow these instructions to diagnose and resolve common Azure service problems systematically.

Triggers

Activate this skill when user wants to:

Debug or troubleshoot production issues
Diagnose errors in Azure services
Analyze application logs or metrics
Fix image pull, cold start, or health probe issues
Investigate why Azure resources are failing
Find root cause of application errors
Troubleshoot App Service issues (high CPU, deployment failures, crashes, slow responses, TLS/custom domains)
Respond to prompts like “troubleshoot app service”, “app service high CPU”, or “app service deployment failure”
Troubleshoot Azure Function Apps (invocation failures, timeouts, binding errors)
Find the App Insights or Log Analytics workspace linked to a Function App
Troubleshoot AKS clusters, nodes, pods, ingress, or Kubernetes networking issues
Troubleshoot Azure VM connectivity issues (RDP/SSH failures, port 3389/22 timeouts, NSG or firewall blocking, credential resets)
Troubleshoot Azure Messaging SDK issues (Event Hubs, Service Bus connection failures, AMQP errors, message lock issues)

Rules

Start with systematic diagnosis flow
Use AppLens (MCP) for AI-powered diagnostics when available
Check resource health before deep-diving into logs
Select appropriate troubleshooting guide based on service type
Document findings and attempted remediation steps
Route AKS incidents to the dedicated AKS troubleshooting document

Quick Diagnosis Flow

Identify symptoms - What’s failing?
Check resource health - Is Azure healthy?
Review logs - What do logs show?
Analyze metrics - Performance patterns?
Investigate recent changes - What changed?

Troubleshooting Guides by Service

Service	Common Issues	Reference
Container Apps	Image pull failures, cold starts, health probes, port mismatches	container-apps/ (opens in a new tab)
App Service	High CPU, deployment failures, crashes, slow responses, TLS/custom domains	app-service/ (opens in a new tab)
Function Apps	App details, invocation failures, timeouts, binding errors, cold starts, missing app settings	functions/ (opens in a new tab)
AKS	Cluster access, nodes, `kube-system`, scheduling, crash loops, ingress, DNS, upgrades	AKS Troubleshooting (opens in a new tab)
Compute	VM RDP/SSH connectivity, NSG/firewall blocks, credential resets, VM agent/tooling issues	VM Connectivity Troubleshooting (opens in a new tab)
Messaging	Event Hubs & Service Bus SDK errors, AMQP failures, message lock, connectivity	Messaging Troubleshooting (opens in a new tab)

Routing

Keep Container Apps and Function Apps diagnostics in this parent skill.
Route active AKS incidents, AKS-specific intake, evidence gathering, and remediation guidance to AKS Troubleshooting (opens in a new tab).
Route Azure VM RDP/SSH connectivity, NSG/firewall, credential reset, and VM agent troubleshooting to VM Connectivity Troubleshooting (opens in a new tab).
Route Azure Messaging SDK troubleshooting (Event Hubs, Service Bus) to Messaging Troubleshooting (opens in a new tab).

Quick Reference

Common Diagnostic Commands

# Check resource health
az resource show --ids RESOURCE_ID
# View activity log
az monitor activity-log list -g RG --max-events 20
# Container Apps logs
az containerapp logs show --name APP -g RG --follow
# Function App logs (query App Insights traces)
az monitor app-insights query --apps APP-INSIGHTS -g RG \
  --analytics-query "traces | where timestamp > ago(1h) | order by timestamp desc | take 50"

AppLens (MCP Tools)

For AI-powered diagnostics, use:

mcp_azure_mcp_applens
  intent: "diagnose issues with <resource-name>"
  command: "diagnose"
  parameters:
    resourceId: "<resource-id>"

Provides:
- Automated issue detection
- Root cause analysis
- Remediation recommendations

Azure Monitor (MCP Tools)

For querying logs and metrics:

mcp_azure_mcp_monitor
  intent: "query logs for <resource-name>"
  command: "logs_query"
  parameters:
    workspaceId: "<workspace-id>"
    query: "<KQL-query>"

See kql-queries.md (opens in a new tab) for common diagnostic queries.

Check Azure Resource Health

Using MCP

mcp_azure_mcp_resourcehealth
  intent: "check health status of <resource-name>"
  command: "get"
  parameters:
    resourceId: "<resource-id>"

Using CLI

# Check specific resource health
az resource show --ids RESOURCE_ID

# Check recent activity
az monitor activity-log list -g RG --max-events 20

References

Install this repository

$ npx skills add microsoft/azure-skills

» /plugin marketplace add microsoft/azure-skills

Skills install per repository, not per chapter — the CLI has no documented per-skill form, so we do not print one.

About this skill

Trigger

Debug Azure production issues on Azure using AppLens, Azure Monitor, resource health, and safe triage. WHEN: debug production issues, troubleshoot app service, app service high CPU, app service deployment failure, troubleshoot container apps, troubleshoot functions, troubleshoot AKS, VM RDP, Linux SSH, VM black screen, can't connect to VM, reset VM password, NSG or firewall blocking, kubectl cannot connect, kube-system/CoreDNS failures, pod pending, crashloop, node not ready, upgrade failures, analyze logs, KQL, insights, image pull failures, cold start issues, health probe failures, resource health, root cause of errors, troubleshoot event hubs, troubleshoot service bus, messaging SDK error, AMQP connection failure, message lock lost, service bus dead letter.

The verbatim description from this skill’s front matter — the string an agent matches on to decide whether to load it.

Licence: MIT
Also published for: GitHub — collapsed into this chapter because the copies are the same skill.
Source: skills/azure-diagnostics/SKILL.md

Colophon for this issue

Colophon

How this issue was made

Source

github.com/microsoft/azure-skills, branch main, last pushed 7 August 2026.

Licence

MIT — the text of every chapter is reproduced unmodified, frontmatter included, under the upstream licence.

Discovery

37 chapters found by walking the repository tree for SKILL.md, not by matching a directory convention. 6 distinct layouts observed: skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/azure-app-onboard/*/SKILL.md, skills/azure-kubernetes/*/SKILL.md, skills/microsoft-foundry/*/SKILL.md, skills/microsoft-foundry/models/deploy-model/*/SKILL.md, skills/microsoft-foundry/models/*/SKILL.md.

Duplicates collapsed

37 mirror copies folded into their canonical chapter — republished for GitHub. Copies match on content hash and on position once a leading per-agent prefix is stripped, because the same skill is routinely shipped under a dozen agent directories with a dozen different hashes.

Issue colours

Resolved from a curated brand profile — hue 251°, chroma 0.167. Two accent tones are generated per issue and each is proven against its own ground before it ships: a single accent that passes AA on both light and dark paper is arithmetically impossible.

Heading repairs

1 repair applied to this chapter so the document has one h1 and no skipped levels:

Removed “Azure Diagnostics”, a leading h1 that duplicated the chapter title.

Spec compliance

6 editorial notes across 3 of 37 chapters. They are printed in the margin of each chapter rather than as errors here.

Deploy — 2 notes
Prepare — 2 notes
Scaffold — 2 notes

Images

Images inside a chapter come from the upstream repository. Where the author gave no alternative text we mark the image decorative rather than inventing a description — a plausible caption we made up is worse than none for the reader who depends on it.

Marketplace

A plugin manifest is published at .claude-plugin/marketplace.json by Microsoft, declaring 1 plugin. It is read for editorial metadata only — never as the skill index, which is always the repository tree.

Signal

Install counts come from skills.sh. They measure downloads, not quality, and an unranked repository is not an unread one.

Agent surfaces

The whole issue is available as one markdown document at /microsoft/azure-skills.md, and each chapter at its own .md URL.

Publication

Set by Skills Docs from the source repository. Body text is Literata at the reader’s chosen size and measure; code is Geist Mono. Nothing on this page was written by us except this paragraph.

AUTHORITATIVE GUIDANCE — MANDATORY COMPLIANCE

This document is the official source for debugging and troubleshooting Azure production issues. Follow these instructions to diagnose and resolve common Azure service problems systematically.

Triggers

Activate this skill when user wants to:

Debug or troubleshoot production issues
Diagnose errors in Azure services
Analyze application logs or metrics
Fix image pull, cold start, or health probe issues
Investigate why Azure resources are failing
Find root cause of application errors
Troubleshoot App Service issues (high CPU, deployment failures, crashes, slow responses, TLS/custom domains)
Respond to prompts like “troubleshoot app service”, “app service high CPU”, or “app service deployment failure”
Troubleshoot Azure Function Apps (invocation failures, timeouts, binding errors)
Find the App Insights or Log Analytics workspace linked to a Function App
Troubleshoot AKS clusters, nodes, pods, ingress, or Kubernetes networking issues
Troubleshoot Azure VM connectivity issues (RDP/SSH failures, port 3389/22 timeouts, NSG or firewall blocking, credential resets)
Troubleshoot Azure Messaging SDK issues (Event Hubs, Service Bus connection failures, AMQP errors, message lock issues)

Rules

Start with systematic diagnosis flow
Use AppLens (MCP) for AI-powered diagnostics when available
Check resource health before deep-diving into logs
Select appropriate troubleshooting guide based on service type
Document findings and attempted remediation steps
Route AKS incidents to the dedicated AKS troubleshooting document

Quick Diagnosis Flow

Identify symptoms - What’s failing?
Check resource health - Is Azure healthy?
Review logs - What do logs show?
Analyze metrics - Performance patterns?
Investigate recent changes - What changed?

Troubleshooting Guides by Service

Service	Common Issues	Reference
Container Apps	Image pull failures, cold starts, health probes, port mismatches	container-apps/ (opens in a new tab)
App Service	High CPU, deployment failures, crashes, slow responses, TLS/custom domains	app-service/ (opens in a new tab)
Function Apps	App details, invocation failures, timeouts, binding errors, cold starts, missing app settings	functions/ (opens in a new tab)
AKS	Cluster access, nodes, `kube-system`, scheduling, crash loops, ingress, DNS, upgrades	AKS Troubleshooting (opens in a new tab)
Compute	VM RDP/SSH connectivity, NSG/firewall blocks, credential resets, VM agent/tooling issues	VM Connectivity Troubleshooting (opens in a new tab)
Messaging	Event Hubs & Service Bus SDK errors, AMQP failures, message lock, connectivity	Messaging Troubleshooting (opens in a new tab)

Routing

Keep Container Apps and Function Apps diagnostics in this parent skill.
Route active AKS incidents, AKS-specific intake, evidence gathering, and remediation guidance to AKS Troubleshooting (opens in a new tab).
Route Azure VM RDP/SSH connectivity, NSG/firewall, credential reset, and VM agent troubleshooting to VM Connectivity Troubleshooting (opens in a new tab).
Route Azure Messaging SDK troubleshooting (Event Hubs, Service Bus) to Messaging Troubleshooting (opens in a new tab).

Quick Reference

Common Diagnostic Commands

# Check resource health
az resource show --ids RESOURCE_ID
# View activity log
az monitor activity-log list -g RG --max-events 20
# Container Apps logs
az containerapp logs show --name APP -g RG --follow
# Function App logs (query App Insights traces)
az monitor app-insights query --apps APP-INSIGHTS -g RG \
  --analytics-query "traces | where timestamp > ago(1h) | order by timestamp desc | take 50"

AppLens (MCP Tools)

For AI-powered diagnostics, use:

mcp_azure_mcp_applens
  intent: "diagnose issues with <resource-name>"
  command: "diagnose"
  parameters:
    resourceId: "<resource-id>"

Provides:
- Automated issue detection
- Root cause analysis
- Remediation recommendations

Azure Monitor (MCP Tools)

For querying logs and metrics:

mcp_azure_mcp_monitor
  intent: "query logs for <resource-name>"
  command: "logs_query"
  parameters:
    workspaceId: "<workspace-id>"
    query: "<KQL-query>"

See kql-queries.md (opens in a new tab) for common diagnostic queries.

Check Azure Resource Health

Using MCP

mcp_azure_mcp_resourcehealth
  intent: "check health status of <resource-name>"
  command: "get"
  parameters:
    resourceId: "<resource-id>"

Using CLI

# Check specific resource health
az resource show --ids RESOURCE_ID

# Check recent activity
az monitor activity-log list -g RG --max-events 20

About this skill

Trigger

Colophon

Appendix 15.1–15.46

ReferencesMarkdown · 5 files

Scripts8 files

Also bundledMarkdown · 33 files

About this skill

Trigger

Colophon

Appendix 15.1–15.46

ReferencesMarkdown · 5 files

Scripts8 files

Also bundledMarkdown · 33 files