How frequently are the Azure Storage Queue metrics updated? - azure-monitoring

Question

I observed that it took about 6 hours from the time of setting up Diagnostics (the newer offering still in preview) for the Queue Message Count metric to move from 0 to the actual total number of messages in queue. The other capacity metrics Queue Capacity and Queue Count took about 1 hour to reflect actual values.
Can anyone shed light on how these metrics are updated? It would be good to know how to predict the accuracy of the graphs.
I am concerned because if the latency of these metrics is typically this large then an alert based on queue metrics could take too long to raise.

Answer 1

Update:
Platform metrics are created by Azure resources and give you visibility into their health and performance. Each type of resource creates a distinct set of metrics without any configuration required. Platform metrics are collected from Azure resources at one-minute frequency unless specified otherwise in the metric's definition.
And 'Queue Message Count' is platform metrics.
So it should update the data every 1 minute.
But it didn't. And this is not a problem that only occur on portal. Even you use rest api to get the QueueMessageCount, it still not update after 1 minute:
https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx/resourceGroups/0730BowmanWindow/providers/Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/0730bowmanwindow/queueServices/default/providers/microsoft.insights/metrics?interval=PT1H&metricnames=QueueMessageCount&aggregation=Average&top=100&orderby=Average&api-version=2018-01-01&metricnamespace=Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/queueServices
{
"cost": 59,
"timespan": "2021-05-17T08:57:56Z/2021-05-17T09:57:56Z",
"interval": "PT1H",
"value": [
{
"id": "/subscriptions/xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx/resourceGroups/0730BowmanWindow/providers/Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/0730bowmanwindow/queueServices/default/providers/Microsoft.Insights/metrics/QueueMessageCount",
"type": "Microsoft.Insights/metrics",
"name": {
"value": "QueueMessageCount",
"localizedValue": "Queue Message Count"
},
"displayDescription": "The number of unexpired queue messages in the storage account.",
"unit": "Count",
"timeseries": [
{
"metadatavalues": [],
"data": [
{
"timeStamp": "2021-05-17T08:57:00Z",
"average": 1.0
}
]
}
],
"errorCode": "Success"
}
],
"namespace": "Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/queueServices",
"resourceregion": "centralus"
}
This may be an issue that needs to be reported to the azure team. It is so slow, it even loses its practicality. I think send an alert based on this is a bad thing(it’s too slow).
Maybe you can design you own logic by code to check the QueueMessageCount.
Just a sample(C#):
1, Get Queues
Then get all of the queue names.
2, Get Properties
Then get the number of the message in each queue.
3, sum the obtained numbers.
4, send custom alert.
Original Answer:
At first, after I send message to one queue in queue storage, the 'Queue Message Count' also remains stubbornly at zero on my side, but a few hours later it can get the 'Queue Message Count':
I thought it would be a bug, but it seems to work well now.