September Product Power Hour: Cloud Monitoring with Kubernetes & Containers
Overview This month’s Product Power Hour focused on Cloud Monitoring with Kubernetes and Containers, emphasizing simplified observability across containerized environments. The session demonstrated how LogicMonitor makes monitoring clusters, pods, and workloads easier without overwhelming teams with noise. Through demos, best practices, and customer discussions, attendees gained practical insights into deploying and managing monitoring at scale with AKS, EKS, and beyond. Key Highlights ⭐ Seamless Enablement: Existing PaaS customers can activate Kubernetes monitoring out of the box, while others can leverage LM’s container monitoring license for quick setup. ⭐ Deeper Visibility: Demonstrations showcased how LM provides observability across nodes, pods, and system containers—cutting through complexity without flooding teams with alerts. ⭐ Retention & History: The session clarified how historical K8s data is retained and how teams can use that data for trend analysis and capacity planning. ⭐ Best Practices: Real-world examples illustrated how to configure thresholds effectively to avoid alert fatigue, especially in sandbox or test clusters. Q&A Q: How can we enable this Kubernetes for existing customers? A: “For an existing PaaS customer you just configure it as it is included in the PaaS License — 1 PaaS license = 1 monitored pod (existing cloud licensing model). For AKS or EKS monitoring you just configure it in your cloud configuration (check the box). For a non-PaaS customer you need to add the LM Container Monitoring license (old license model).” Q: I am new to K8s — how do I monitor the critical components of the platform when there are so many system containers? A: “Focus on the system containers and use the out-of-the-box DataSources as a starting point, then tune thresholds to reduce noise.” Q: What will be the retention period of history data of K8s monitors? A: “Retention is handled according to LogicMonitor’s standard data retention policies, so you can view history for trending and analysis just like other monitored resources.” What’s Next 💻Level Up Your IT Universe: Next LogicMonitor Innovations Unveiled Webinar On September 24, discover the latest Edwin AI and LM Envision capabilities, including noise-cutting AI agents, Dynamic Service Insights, and expanded multi-cloud monitoring, designed to move IT from reactive to resilient. ➡️Register here to save your spot! 🪵 Logs for Lunch October 8: Logs Overages & Reducing MTTR with Cloud Logs ⚡ Next Product Power Hour October 29: App Visibility for ITOps Want to check out previous Product Power Hours? Explore the Product Power Hour Hub in the LM Community! 📚 Badges and Certifications Earn free, on-demand, digital badges that validate your product knowledge and platform skills. Available badges: 🛡️Getting Started 🛡️Collectors 🛡️Logs 🛡️AI Ops Adoption 🛡️Dashboards Review If you missed any part of the session or want to revisit the content, we’ve got you covered: Review the slide deck Want to dive deeper into this session? Watch the recording below ⬇️Best Practices for Practitioners: Azure Network Monitoring
Overview Microsoft Azure is a dynamic and scalable cloud platform that supports businesses in delivering applications, managing infrastructure, and optimizing operations. Effective monitoring of Azure environments ensures high availability, performance efficiency, and cost management. As cloud environments grow in complexity, organizations need a robust monitoring strategy to track resource utilization, detect anomalies, and manage expenditures. Implementing a structured monitoring approach helps maintain operational stability, optimize cloud spending, and enhance security compliance. Key Principles Holistic Cloud Monitoring – Unify Azure monitoring with on-premises and multi-cloud environments for complete visibility. Proactive Alerting – Set up custom alerting to detect anomalies before they affect business operations. Cost Optimization – Monitor Azure expenses with detailed cost breakdowns and tagging strategies. Security and Compliance – Track authentication events, directory changes, and role assignments in Azure Active Directory. Scalability and Automation – Automate resource discovery and performance tracking across Azure services. Azure Monitoring Features and Methods Adding Azure Cloud Monitoring Connect your Azure account to a monitoring solution using your Tenant ID, Client ID, and Secret Key. Ensure automated discovery of all supported Azure services. Gain visibility into performance, availability, and security metrics for virtual machines, databases, and networking resources. Customizing Azure Monitor DataSources Modify monitoring DataSources to collect specific performance metrics. Use JSON path customization to extract performance indicators and configure polling intervals. Ensure data collection aligns with monitoring objectives by customizing metric filters. Monitoring Azure Backup and Recovery Protected Items Track the status of Azure Backup operations to ensure data integrity. Set up alerts for backup failures, recovery status, and retention policy compliance. Identify gaps in backup coverage and ensure business continuity. Azure Billing and Cost Monitoring Track Azure billing data to analyze spending patterns and optimize cost allocation. Configure cost alerts to identify unexpected usage spikes. Monitor Azure costs by tag to segment spending by departments, projects, or business units. Monitoring Azure Active Directory (AAD) Gain insights into user authentication, failed logins, and directory sync status. Monitor changes in role assignments, security settings, and access permissions. Set up alerts for suspicious login activity or potential security breaches. Best Practices Comprehensive Resource Discovery Ensure all Azure services are automatically discovered by your monitoring solution. Enable tag-based grouping to categorize monitored resources effectively. Alerting Strategy Define threshold-based alerts for key performance indicators. Implement multi-tier alerting to differentiate between warnings and critical failures. Avoid alert fatigue by fine-tuning threshold sensitivity. Cost Management Optimization Implement tag-based cost tracking to allocate expenses to business units. Set up spending alerts to avoid unexpected cost overruns. Security and Compliance Monitoring Regularly review Azure Active Directory logs to detect unauthorized access. Audit role-based access control (RBAC) changes and alert on modifications. Customization and Automation Use monitoring APIs to integrate data with other IT management tools. Automate reporting and dashboard updates for executive visibility. Implementation Checklist ✅ Connect Azure to a monitoring solution and verify account integration. ✅ Customize DataSources to collect relevant performance metrics. ✅ Enable Alerts to monitor resource health and prevent failures. ✅ Configure Billing Monitoring to track cloud expenditures and optimize costs. ✅ Monitor Azure Active Directory to ensure compliance and security. ✅ Regularly review monitoring configurations and adjust thresholds as needed. Conclusion A well-structured Azure monitoring strategy enhances operational visibility, reduces downtime, and optimizes cloud spending. By leveraging automated monitoring, customized alerting, and cost-tracking strategies, IT teams can proactively manage Azure environments and ensure business continuity. Monitoring solutions provide real-time insights, automated issue resolution, and scalable monitoring capabilities, empowering organizations to maintain a high-performance cloud infrastructure. Additional Resources Introduction to Cloud Monitoring Adding Microsoft Azure Cloud Monitoring Monitoring Azure Backup and Recovery Protected Items Azure Billing Monitoring Setup Azure Cost by Tag Monitoring Monitoring Azure Active Directory Customizing Azure Monitor DataSources
