Diagnosing issues with the network watcher extension service on a linux machine?

David Beleznay 41 Reputation points
2020-11-17T21:57:50.517+00:00

Hi there,

Is it possible to diagnose issues with the Network Watcher Extension on a linux machine? or even to restart the service somehow?

I have 2 vms, they have network monitor previews set up to test connections to each other, as well as connections to the redis and azure mysql servers that they're talking to.

I've found that when I first set up the network monitor one of the machines just wasn't reporting somehow. I restarted the machine, then it fixed itself.
however if I make changes to the network monitor configuration, they're sometimes not picked up by one of the machines.

This will possibly be fine during a real deployment, as I'm not making changes to the configuration. or can restart the machines after a deployment, but now I'm having the issue where even after restarting one of the machines it is still not updating its metrics for only one of the tests ( it's updating all the others? )

How can I diagnose this? I tried looking at the logs for the network watcher, and it was an awful lot of messages coming in fairly fast, I'm not even sure what to look at .

everything was working earlier today, I've just been iterating through scenarios to try to sell network watcher to my team, so I can have some samples of what it can do / will look like. It stopped working after stopping one of the VMs for a few minutes.

Azure Network Watcher
Azure Network Watcher
An Azure service that is used to monitor, diagnose, and gain insights into network performance and health.
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  1. GitaraniSharma-MSFT 49,591 Reputation points Microsoft Employee
    2020-11-18T11:28:04.083+00:00

    Hello @David Beleznay ,

    When you face issues with the Network Watcher Agent virtual machine extension for Linux, performing simple troubleshooting steps such as upgrading or reinstalling the agent will help fix the issues.

    So, the first step for you would be to check the agent status & if the version is lower than latest version, upgrade the agent.
    Please follow below article to update the Network Watcher extension to the latest version which is 1.4.1654.1 (if not updated already):
    https://video2.skills-academy.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/extensions/network-watcher-update

    If your Network Watcher extension agent is already at the latest version, try re-installing the agent and perform a VM reboot and check again.

    If you face issues in un-installing and re-installing the agent, you would need to do a full cleanup, which we can discuss as a last resort.

    Hope this helps!

    Kindly let us know if the above helps or you need further assistance on this issue.

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Please "Accept the answer" if the information helped you. This will help us and others in the community as well.

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  1. TravisCragg-MSFT 5,681 Reputation points Microsoft Employee
    2020-11-19T22:58:23.267+00:00

    @David Beleznay Unfortunately we do not have adequate documentation on diagnosing an extension issue, and it can be a tedious process to figure out exactly what went wrong.

    typically for extension issues I start with checking the status of the extension. This can be done in the portal, PowerShell, or with resources.azure.com. This will give you a baseline of the extension's status, and see if the extension installed / is running properly.

    Next, I like to check the Azure Linux Agent. VM Extensions are installed and run through the VM agent, and issues with the agent will cause issues with the extension. You can find the Linux agent logs at /var/log/waagent.log. Look at the time of the extension installation to see if any issues occurred during installation, or after the installation time to see if an error is being reported. Typically if an error makes it to the VM agent logs, it is also reported in the status.

    Next, check the logs for the Network Watcher extension, found at /var/log/Microsoft/Azure/NetworkWatcherAgent/Logs. Typically if there is an error with the function of the agent, you will find it here. Start checking the logs at the time you pushed the configuration change .

    For Installation or any configuration changes you make to the Network Watcher Agent, The process will follow:

    configuration change -> VM Agent -> NW Agent.

    If you have any questions about particular error, please post it here. In many cases you will need to work with Azure Support to RCA an issue with this extension. In most cases, best resolution is to restart the VM / reinstall the agent, as Gita outlined.

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