Microsoft Azure may be the most powerful platform ever created for running workloads and scaling resources to meet current demand. However, it isn’t enough to just have a lot of hardware that can ramp up as needed. It’s about automating, managing and monitoring those workloads as well, and that’s where the monitor for Azure management comes in as an exciting managed public cloud tool.
💻 Azure Monitor
The monitor comprises for core components that are crucial to integrated cloud services. These are the activity log, metrics, diagnostics logs and log search mechanism. If you’ve used the current Azure-related IT solutions, then these may seem familiar. After all, they’re not completely new. The capabilities are, however, expanded, and the consolidated package makes a big difference.
💻 Activity Log
As the name suggests, this provides a list of all recent activities performed, and by default, it provides insights about the last 24 hours. You can, however, broaden that timespan as your data centre management approach or your particular need calls for. You could, for instance, use this tool to query activities across the past 90 days or even longer. You can also filter the results based on a wide range of characteristics, including event category, event severity, subscription and so forth.
💻 Metrics
If you’re familiar with Windows Server Event Logs, then you know the kind of information that the activity log provides. Such information is useful to a point, but text isn’t always the best medium. That’s where metrics come in. This is where you can create and analyze graphical visualizations. You can use the same filters as described above and pick and choose which resources are represented. Populating graphs can take Microsoft Azure some time, but it’s faster than most open source technologies.
💻 Diagnostics Logs
Another important aspect of any managed public cloud services is diagnostic logs, and the Azure management monitor lets you save operational data to storage. It also provides the option to send data to other tools, such as an event hub or the Microsoft log analytics engine. The interface for this tool is quite similar to the metrics tool, and that’s important for a number of reasons including the speed at which you can transmit information gleaned from metrics to other services.
💻 Log search
The fourth significant components of these integrated cloud services is the log search tool. For many companies, integrated IT solutions means both cloud-based management and local data centre management. That’s where this tool comes in. Think of this is as a single view onto the resources that are on-site, off-site and in the cloud. Simply connect the search tool to any data source, and Azure itself can even serve as that source. Visit the Carbon60 Networks website for additional information and more online resources.