What are Microsoft Azure Monitoring Tools?

Introduction

Today, organizations depend on cloud-based infrastructure to run and provide their services to clients. Microsoft Azure, being one of the most innovative cloud computing platforms, provides a number of tools and services for this infrastructure. Although, as the complexity of the cloud environment has grown, the monitoring and governance of these resources have also been a major issue. This is when various Azure monitoring tools come into the picture.

It will help you monitor the status of your system in real-time, detect risks that have not yet turned into critical ones, and based on reliable information, make management decisions regarding the use of resources. Without such tools, you are literally flying blind, thus making your system open to downtimes, errors, and even security incidents. You can join AZ 900 and AZ 104 Combo Training to understand the workings of these tools in detail.

In this article, the focus will be on Microsoft Azure monitoring tools and some third-party tools, where we will be looking at what they are, how you choose the right tool to use, and which are the best tools available.

Before getting into more details, let us first understand what Azure Monitoring Tools are.

What are Microsoft Azure Monitoring Tools?

Azure Monitoring tools refer to software applications or systems provided by Microsoft for monitoring the performance, health, and security of Azure resources. The monitoring process is the collection of data from logs, metrics, and events which in turn involves providing insights and alerts to be able to solve problems in real time.

Azure monitoring tools are designed to help you:

• Gather data and metrics associated with the Azure services and applications.
• Discover areas of potential performance issues, mistakes, and threats.
• Fix problem areas with the help of logs and other quantitative measures.
• Get reminders and notifications for important events.
• Maximize the utilization of resources and minimize the expenses.

But how does the monitoring process in Azure take place? Let us look into it.

The monitoring process in Azure typically involves the following stages:

• Data Collection: It is the first step of the monitoring process in Azure, where the tool collects metrics, logs, and other information about Azure resources, such as virtual machines, storage, databases, and applications.
• Data Processing: The second step is to process the data. Data analyzing and data processing are mainly to understand the collected data to find the trends, patterns, and problem areas.
• Alerting and Notification: After data processing, Alerts and notifications are raised when defined parameters or threshold limits are breached.
• Visualization and Reporting: The final step is visualization and reporting. The first step is to organize the data in a way that is easy to analyze and after that, represent it with the use of different dashboards, charts, and reports.

Now that you have a basic understanding of what Azure Monitoring tools are. Now, let us look into some of the best Azure Monitoring tools.

Top Azure Monitoring Tools

Now, let us explore the top Azure monitoring tools, including their advantages and disadvantages.

Azure Monitor

Azure Monitor is one of the Azure monitoring tools that allow you to have an overall picture of your Azure resources. It helps you to gather data from various sources such as logs, metrics, and event sources.

With Azure Monitor, you can:

• Supervise the running of the application and search for the areas which require optimization.
• Maintain records of the resources used and control and determine the most efficient expense levels.
• Note events for which one should be alerted or receive notifications.
• Interact with other Microsoft Azure services, for example, Active Directory, Log Analytics, and Azure storage.

Advantages

• Deep integration with Azure: Azure Monitor is a native Azure service which implies that it works well and easily integrates with other Azure services.
• Powerful and comprehensive: Serves to define numerous aspects and features for the monitoring of your Azure environment.
• Scalable and cost-effective: Choosing Azure Monitor does not limit you as it is elastic to the type of monitoring you require, and there are different ways of payment.

Disadvantages

• Learning curve: Azure Monitor requires some effort to understand all the functions it can perform at the beginner level.
• Limited customizability: There is still some flexibility within the products in terms of alert customization; however, these are not as comprehensive compared with third-party tools available in the market.

Azure Advisor

Azure Advisor is a cloud-based advisory tool that offers guidance and best practices on the usage of Azure for optimizing your Azure resources. It analyzes your usage patterns, identifies opportunities for improvement, and offers actionable insights to:

• Increase efficiency of the utilization of resources and decrease costs
• Enhance security as well as the level of compliance
• Improve efficiency and durability
• Simplify the management of Azure resources

Advantages

• Proactive recommendations: Can make a prediction about possible problems and offer strategies for effective change.
• Cost savings: Enables you to plan effectively for the amount of money you want to spend on Azure and, at the same time, see opportunities for cutting your expenditure.
• Security enhancements: Provides suggestions on how to upgrade the security position of your Azure environment.

Disadvantages

• Limited scope: While it is always good to get recommendations geared towards general optimization. Azure Advisor may not cover all the monitoring that your particular application might require.
• Not real-time: Unfortunately, Azure Advisor only gives suggestions based on past data; thus, it cannot alert you to present problems.

Azure Network Watcher

Next in the list of Azure Monitoring tools is Azure Network Watcher, which is all about monitoring your network in Azure. This tool provides you with network monitoring and diagnostics tools to troubleshoot networks, connections, and traffic in virtual systems. From packet capture to VPN troubleshooting, Azure Network Watcher is a must-have tool for any cloud networking enthusiast. With Network Watcher, you can:

• Monitor and examine the packets being transmitted over a particular network.
• Diagnose the network problems and analyze problematic elements of the network performance.
• Secure communications integrity and threat identification.
• It can also interact with other Azure services like Azure Databricks, Azure Virtual Network and Azure Load Balancer.

Advantages

• Network troubleshooting: Effective in diagnosing, isolating, and fixing network connectivity problems at a faster pace.
• Traffic analysis: It gives an understanding of the dynamics of network traffic, enabling one to enhance the congestion of the network.
• Security monitoring: Assists in the actual process of identifying and evaluating issues concerning network security.

Disadvantages

• Focused on networking: Azure Network Watcher is mainly confined to the networking layer and hence, may not be effective for other aspects in the Azure environment.
• Limited integration with other tools: Azure Network Watcher has limited interoperability with Azure monitoring services.

We have discussed some of the best Azure monitoring tools. Still, there are some third-party tools that work with Azure. Let us discuss these tools.

Serverless360

Serverless360 is one of the third-party tools for Azure with a focus on serverless architectures. This powerful platform assists you in keeping track of your Azure Functions, Logic Apps, and other serverless assets while offering you meaningful data on performance or even cost. It provides:

• Monitoring and analyzing in real-time
• Signatures from the log and metrics
• Enhanced features such as alerts and notifications.

Advantages

• Dedicated to serverless: Offers specific tools for managing serverless applications.
• Comprehensive monitoring: Provides a variety of monitoring metrics and dashboards for serverless applications.
• Advanced troubleshooting: Features and abilities that are used for the diagnostics of various problems in intricate serverless environments.

Disadvantages

• Limited to serverless: Serverless360 is almost designed for serverless architectures and could be not enough to monitor other Azure resources.
• Subscription cost: Currently, Serverless360 is a paid service and access to its features is available only after obtaining a paid subscription.

AppDynamics

Another among the third-party Azure monitoring tools is AppDynamics, which is an APM (Application Performance Monitoring) solution that brings deep visibility to your Azure applications. It goes a step further from monitoring the infrastructure down to application code, user interactions, and performance issues. It provides:

• Monitoring of application at run time
• Business intelligence functions such as data analysis and reporting technologies
• Link with other Microsoft Azure solutions like Azure Monitor and Azure Log Analytics
• Flexibility with regard to programming languages as well as application Frameworks

Advantages

• Application-centric monitoring: This is mainly concerned with the evaluation of your application performance and health.
• Code-level insights: Allows getting metrics on the application code to find out where the performance issue may be happening.
• User experience monitoring: Monitors activity flow and gives information about the application’s functioning from the user’s viewpoint.

Disadvantages

• Subscription cost: AppDynamics is a paid tool that requires a certain amount of money to be able to use this tool/service.
• Potential complexity: AppDynamics can be a bit challenging to implement as well as deploy, especially when it comes to decisions on the architecture.

Datadog

Datadog is a cloud monitoring and observability platform where companies can arrange all their tools related to monitoring their own Azure infrastructure, applications, logs, etc. It provides:

• Timely analysis
• Sophisticated view creation and navigation features
• Interoperability with other Azure services like Azure Monitor as well as Azure Log Analytics
• Features such as multiple programming language support and available programming frameworks

Advantages

• Unified platform: This enables one to have a look at the overall status of your infrastructure and the application at once.
• Extensive integrations: Supports integration with numerous Azure services and other third-party tools and applications.
• Advanced analytics: Provides functionalities for comprehending your monitoring data that are highly useful and efficient.

Disadvantages

• Subscription cost: Datadog is a paid tool with different pricing depending on what type of user you are.
• Learning curve: Datadog should take time to determine some aspects of the program since some aspects of the program might be difficult to install and personalize.

These are some of the most important Azure Monitoring Tools. Let us now look into some of the points that you must consider in order to choose the right Azure Monitoring Tool.

How to Choose the Right Azure Monitoring Tool?

Traditional monitoring tools are no longer efficient in modern cloud computing. It can be tiring and quite often, it is not very efficient in the sense of granularity and the level of flexibility that today’s clouds need from the tools that are used for their orchestration.

That’s where Azure monitoring tools come in. These are solutions that have been designed to be used with the cloud from the very beginning, and such tools contain functions and options that the earlier tools did not have. When choosing the right Azure monitoring tool for your needs, consider factors like:

• Software should be easy to operate and also should support your current operations
• Depth and breadth of monitoring capabilities
• The feature to grow as your cloud infrastructure does hence is flexible to the growing business needs
• Pricing and cost-effectiveness

Now, we have covered everything about Azure Monitoring Tools.

Conclusion

Microsoft Azure monitoring tools are essential for maintaining a healthy, efficient, and secure Azure environment. With so many tools available, selecting the right one can be difficult. IT teams can make informed decisions about their Azure monitoring needs by understanding the importance of monitoring tools, the monitoring process, and the key factors to consider when choosing a tool. Remember to consider your specific needs and evaluate the top Azure monitoring tools discussed above.

Wishing you all the best in your endeavors, and I hope this guide has been informative and helpful for you!

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