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
Azure Cloud Monitoring Question (M365/Sharepoint)
As an MSP employee trying to monitor Azure resources for a client, I need guidance on the setup process. Do I need to purchase specific Azure subscriptions to integrate a cloud account into LogicMonitor, and can I monitor multiple Azure tenants using a single enterprise application?
Enhanced Azure Subscription Monitoring API
We appreciate the robust monitoring capabilities provided by LogicMonitor. However, we've encountered challenges when managing Azure subscriptions. Specifically, enabling/disabling monitoring for new subscriptions requires manual intervention, leading to potential oversights. Our attempted solution involved using the REST API, but limitations with versioning (v3 vs. v4) hindered our progress. We noticed that adding subscriptions to the custom property `azure.subscriptionIDs` doesn't directly impact monitoring. We kindly request the following enhancements: 1. A dedicated API endpoint to enable/disable subscription monitoring. 2. Clarification on v4 API availability or a preview version. Such improvements would significantly streamline our workflow and enhance efficiency.
☁️ Monitor Azure Resource Events with LogicMonitor Logs
I have a strong preference for Microsoft Azure due to its exceptional capabilities! I recently wrote a blog post showcasing how to bring your resource events to the LogicMonitor platform. This way, you can set up alerts for critical business operations, such as when a new user is added to your Active Directory (Entra), or when a file is deleted from your blob storage. I hope you find it as helpful as I did! Monitor Azure Resource Events with LogicMonitor Logs Do you use LogicMonitor or any other monitoring platform to address unique use cases? Share your stories with us!Incident 2023-06-20 - Duplicate Azure devices
Yesterday’s Azure device duplication issue (see https://status.logicmonitor.com/) is still active (details below). This has had far-reaching implications for a few of our (Panoramic Data Limited)’s customers, including an alert storm. At the current time, LogicMonitor have not posted a solution for de-duplicating the Azure VMs or silencing the alerts. We have developed a script to do so, and we are happy to help you to (carefully!) bulk delete your duplicate Azure devices. If you would like to hold a call to remedy this on your LM portal, please contact me direct via Linked In (https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidbond/). However… IF you have a tame .NET dev, feed them some caffeine and instruct them as follows… At a PowerShell prompt: dotnet new install LogicMonitor.Cli dotnet new logicmonitor --name "My.AzureDeduplicator" code . Edit and update appsettings.json Provide account, tokenId and tokenKey Set “Setting1” to the string version of the ResourceGroup ID that you want to deduplicate from Modify Application.cs as follows: protected override async Task ExecuteAsync(CancellationToken cancellationToken) { try { // Use _logger for logging _logger.LogInformation("Application start. DeviceGroupId is set to {setting1}", _config.Setting1); using var logicMonitorClient = new LogicMonitorClient(_config.LogicMonitorClientOptions); var allDevices = await logicMonitorClient .GetAllAsync<Device>( cancellationToken ) .ConfigureAwait(false); var deviceGroupIdString = _config.Setting1; var devices = allDevices .Where(d => d.DeviceGroupIdsString.Split(',').Any(dgs => dgs == deviceGroupIdString)) .ToList(); _logger.LogInformation("Found {deviceCount} devices", devices.Count); // Find a list of those with a similar name, but ending in #1 var devicesToDedupe = devices .Where(d => d.DisplayName.EndsWith("#1") && devices.Any(d2 => d2.DisplayName == d.DisplayName.Replace("#1", ""))) .ToList(); foreach(var device in devicesToDedupe) { if(cancellationToken.IsCancellationRequested) { return; } _logger.LogInformation("Deduplicate {deviceName}?", device.DisplayName); // Read a keypress from the user and check that it's a Y if(Console.ReadKey().KeyChar == 'Y') { // Delete the duplicate _logger.LogInformation("Deleting {deviceName}", device.DisplayName); await logicMonitorClient .DeleteAsync(device, cancellationToken) .ConfigureAwait(false); } else { _logger.LogInformation("Skipping {deviceName}", device.DisplayName); } } } finally { _lifetime.StopApplication(); } } READ AND UNDERSTAND THE CODE - BE SURE THAT THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT TO DO dotnet run This will prompt you for each device. Usual caveats: THE OWNER MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, WITH RESPECT TO THE CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION AND HEREBY EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. LogicMonitor’s Status page text: LogicMonitor is currently investigating impacts to our LM Cloud Component(s) for MS AzureSubscribe Update - We have rolled back the component responsible for adding duplicate Azure devices. We are continuing to investigate the best approach for removing the incorrectly added duplicate devices. The next update will be around 10am PT on Wednesday June 21st. Jun 20, 2023 - 19:37 CDT Identified - LogicMonitor has identified an issue with our LM Cloud application that may be creating duplicate Azure devices for some customer's accounts. We are currently working towards remediating the issue with our Engineering backend team. We will provide further updates in approximately 2 hours, or if more information is uncovered. Jun 20, 2023 - 17:32 CDT Investigating - LogicMonitor is currently investigating technical abnormalities, which may be impacting customer accounts. We will update once we have further information on the full scope of impact. Jun 20, 2023 - 17:27 CDT
