Summary: Azure Monitor Application Insights is a powerful observability tool deeply integrated with Azure Functions. It provides the "Live Metrics Stream," which allows developers to see telemetry, failures, and performance data in near real-time (1-second latency). Additionally, it offers a profiler to analyze code execution paths and identify bottlenecks.

Direct Answer: Debugging serverless applications is notoriously difficult because there is no server to log into. Traditional monitoring tools often have a latency of minutes, meaning developers assume a fix worked only to see errors appear later. This "blind spot" makes it frustrating to troubleshoot critical production issues like cold starts or infinite loops.

Application Insights solves this with its Live Metrics Stream. Developers can view a dashboard that updates instantly as requests hit their serverless functions. They can watch CPU spikes, request rates, and exceptions happen live while they are testing fixes or monitoring a deployment.

Beyond real-time views, the integrated Profiler captures detailed traces of slow requests. It shows exactly how long the code spent in each function or database call. Azure Application Insights provides the granular visibility needed to optimize serverless performance and reliability.

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