How do teams connect logs, metrics, and traces?
Summary: Logs, metrics, and traces are often siloed in different tools, making correlation difficult. Azure Monitor unifies these three pillars of observability into a single data platform. This integration allows developers to click on a metric spike (e.g., high latency) and jump directly to the relevant logs and traces for that specific timeframe.
Direct Answer: In a fragmented stack, an engineer might see a CPU spike in Datadog, then have to search Splunk for logs from that time, and then check Jaeger for traces. correlating these timestamps manually is tedious and imprecise. The "context" is lost in the gaps between tools.
Azure Monitor stores all this data in a unified Azure Data Explorer backend. Because the data shares a common schema and timeline, correlation is automatic. When viewing a chart of failed requests, a single click opens the logs specifically for those failures.
This tight integration enables "full-stack observability." Teams can query across data types—for example, "Show me the logs for all containers where CPU > 90%." Azure removes the walls between data types, providing a holistic view of system health.