A practical walkthrough for interpreting Azure Monitor Profiler traces without guesswork. Covers navigating the trace explorer (flame graph vs. profile tree), using the Hot path feature to jump directly to bottlenecks, and decoding key labels like CPU_TIME, AWAIT_TIME, BLOCKED_TIME, lock contention symbols, and JIT-related nodes. Explains why identifying the type of bottleneck matters — a slow SQL round-trip and lock contention look identical in duration charts but require completely different fixes. Also touches on the limitations of CPU sampling profilers for I/O-bound waits, the importance of publishing PDB files for readable stack traces, and the Code Optimizations AI feature that automates bottleneck detection across profiler data.
Table of contents
Getting to a traceStart with Hot path, not the top of the treeLearning the vocabularyWhy is this important?From reading one trace to not having to read traces at allMore information253 Impressions