Today Microsoft Azure is considered the most popular cloud computing platform after Amazon Web Services (AWS). It has more than 200 services and resources available, so that you can use it in plenty of ways. This means that the Azure public cloud makes room for hundreds, if not thousands, of unique configurations. With this flexibility, you can easily tailor Azure to your workload’s requirements, but cloud management becomes more challenging. In this blog, we’ll cover the ins and out of Azure monitoring and will also enlist azure monitoring tools.
What is Azure Monitoring?
In the Azure Cloud, monitoring means capturing, analyzing, and interpreting metrics and logs generated by Azure-based services, resources, and processes. It is a crucial cloud computing best practice that includes, among other aspects:
- Azure cloud cost monitoring
- Infrastructure monitoring
- Application performance monitoring
- Database monitoring
- Server monitoring
- End-user monitoring
Microsoft Azure monitoring tools
Microsoft gives a range of Azure monitoring tools, each having a unique function.
- Microsoft Azure Monitor
- Azure Advisor
- Azure Automation
- Azure Cash Management
- Azure Service Health
- Azure Application Insights
- Azure Resource Health
Third-party Azure monitoring software
Azure monitoring tools are also available from a wide range of other companies.
- AppDynamics
- Datadog
- LogicMonitor
- Serverless360
How do Azure monitoring tools help IT managers?
IT managers can use Azure monitoring tools by deploying end-to-end monitoring services to discover or diagnose problems in apps or infrastructure, direct Azure in virtual machines (VMs) or containers, find bottlenecks, and collect data on different activities.
IT teams use Azure monitoring tools to monitor their cloud environment and ensure that their workloads run correctly. Azure monitoring software can monitor performance, availability, and security parameters. Using these measures, one can see an organization’s cloud system in greater detail. Monitoring tools are handy when something isn’t working correctly or your IT team is trying to find out what’s wrong.
Azure is also instrumental when it comes to disaster recovery and backup. Therefore, many businesses rely on Azure for disaster recovery and data backup. Azure also offers an alternate data center option. Many companies prefer to host some or all of their apps in the cloud rather than hosting them in local servers and storage.
Tips for IT managers to make the most of Azure monitoring tools
Monitor your entire infrastructure
How reliable an application is depends on the robustness of the infrastructure that supports it. If you enable monitoring for your entire Azure infrastructure, it can help you achieve full observability and reduce the time it takes to discover possible problems. Through Azure monitoring, you can keep a tab on the health and performance of your hybrid infrastructure, which includes containers, VMs, networks, and storage. This way, all the event logs, metrics, and diagnostics logs generated by your Azure resources are available to you.
Ensure quality with continuous deployment
Monitoring as part of Quality Gates ensures that you stick to your KPIs when you go into production. Infrastructure environment changes have no harmful effect on your KPIs. Azure pipelines make continuous deployment possible. If your CI/CD tests are successful, you can automate the entire procedure from complete code commit to production.
Configure actionable alerts
If you have created a comprehensive alerting pipeline, you can get actionable warnings for all potential failure conditions. You may base your alerts on dynamic or static parameters, and this knowledge might guide your actions. You can get notifications by SMS, email, voicemail, or even via a mobile app. You can use Webhooks to configure alerts in your ITSM Tools or any other alert management system.
Create role-based dashboards
Both development & operations teams must use a standard set of monitoring tools. Thus, similar tools will ensure continuous monitoring, guaranteeing rapid Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Resolve (MTTR).
Both development teams and operations teams can use Azure Monitoring. Alternatively, you can use standard logs and metrics to prepare unique dashboards based on user roles. Workbooks are another excellent tool for development and operations teams to collaborate on resources. Using workbooks, one can create dynamic reports having log queries and analytics charts or as problem-solving instructions. ISmile Technologies brings our managed cloud security services to your defense. We help reimagine cloud security by building it into the foundation of your company so that it can meet your business’s evolving needs. Schedule your free assessment today.
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