Azure Monitoring

Discover and monitor all your Azure resources in minutes using Site24x7's Azure Monitoring. Set up alerts, associate tags with resources, automate actions, and analyze trends in customizable dashboards.

• Authenticate Site24x7
• Add a monitor
• List of services monitored by Site24x7
• Bulk actions
• Inside an Azure resource monitor page
• VM Extensions
• Security
• Licensing
• FAQs

Other supported features:

• Dashboards
• Management actions | Resource dependencies
• Activity logs | Resource logs
• Forecasting
• Alerting | Reports | Monitor groups
• IT automation | Anomaly dashboard
• Guidance report
• Azure Deployment Manager (ADM) Health Check

Authenticate Site24x7

1. Log in to your Site24x7 account and go to Cloud > Azure > Get Started with Azure Monitoring. You can also navigate to this page via Admin > Inventory > Add Monitor > Azure. 
2. The Azure resources can be added for monitoring by authenticating Site24x7 with a custom application. Create your own app in the Microsoft Azure portal and assign the necessary permissions to enable Site24x7 to start monitoring the Azure resources. Refer to the help document on authenticating Site24x7 with custom appsfor detailed instructions.

Add a Monitor

Once the authentication is successful, you will be redirected to the Add Azure Monitor page. On the Add Azure Monitor page: 

1. Provide a unique Display Name for identification purposes.
2. Associate the monitor with existing or new Monitor Groups.
3. Under Azure Resource Filter, select the Subscriptions, Resource Groups, and Service/Resource Typesyou would like to discover and start monitoring them.
   • By default, all the subscriptions and the service types in your Azure account will be selected for monitoring. 
   • New resources will only be discovered once every 30 minutes.
   • This filter will be applied in the upcoming discovery cycle and will not affect the resources which are already added for monitoring.
4. Toggle Yes in the Auto-add New Resource Groups for Monitoring field to automatically add a new resource group for monitoring once it has been added in the Microsoft Azure portal. By default, the option is Yes.
   
   You can manually auto-add new resources for monitoring later by going to your monitor page, clicking the hamburger icon, and selecting Discover Now.
5. Use tags from your Azure portal to Exclude or Include Azure Resources from monitoring. Mention the key-value pair and use the (+) icon to add more combinations.
6. By default, the option is Enable in the Auto Discover New Resources field. This makes sure that new resources created in the Azure portal will be auto-discovered and added to Site24x7 for monitoring. We recommend leaving the option set to Enable, but if you wish not to auto-discover new resources, toggle the button to Disable.
7. Under the Advanced Configuration section, if the service type is VM, toggle the Install the Site24x7 Server Monitoring agent in VMs field to Yes to ensure the monitoring agent gets installed (as an Azure VM extension) in all the VMs present. This filter installs the server monitoring agent in all VMs under the selected subscription to get more than 60 performance metrics. By default, this option is set to Yes.
8. Specify RegEx in the Filter to Install Agent field to specify conditions to install the agent in VMs. Leaving this field empty will prompt installation of the monitoring agent in all VMs.
9. Use the toggle button in the Auto create Monitor Groups field to create a new monitor group by setting it to Yes. By default, the option is No. The value entered in the Key field should be an exact match, and the Value field accepts RegEx arguments. A monitor group will be created, and one sub-group for each tag will be created under the respective monitor group.
10. Under Resource Termination Settings, 
    • Toggle Yes to Mute Resource Termination Alerts if you don't want to receive alerts when the terminated resources are automatically suspended or deleted from Site24x7.
    • Toggle No to Monitor Terminated Resources to ensure the deletion of a resource monitor once it is deleted in the Azure portal. If this field is set to Yes, the monitor will continue to exist but in DOWN status.
    • Toggle Yes to Automatically Remove Terminated Resources from monitoring. You can also choose to define a specific time period (in days) to determine how long the terminated resources should be retained in the Site24x7 web console before permanent deletion. Learn more on how this works.
      
      If you have toggled to No for the Monitor Terminated Resources field, you can specify the number of days after which the resource will be removed from monitoring.
11. Under Guidance Report Configuration, toggle Yes for the Enable all Best Practice Checks and Use Default Baselines option to be recommended best practices that improve the quality of your Azure setup.
12. Under Activity Logs Collection Configuration:
    • Toggle Enable to allow Site24x7 to collect Activity Logs.
    • Set your preferred time interval in the Log Collection Interval field.
    • Select preferred log categories in the Select Log Categories drop-down.
13. Under Configuration Profiles, you can either select pre-existing tags or add new tags in the Tags field.
    
    Learn more about how these tags can be useful to you in our Knowledge Base document. The tags configured in this step will be applied to all the resource type's monitors during discovery.
14. Select existing Notification Profiles and User Groups. You can also integrate Site24x7 alarms with your preferred third-party service. The alert settings configured in this step will be applied to all the resource type's monitors during discovery.
15. Click on Discover Azure Resources to discover and start monitoring. 

On clicking Discover Azure Resources, you'll be directed to the Infrastructure dashboard. It may take a few minutes for the resources to be discovered. This process does not require you to stay on that page.

Dashboards

There are three exclusive dashboards for Azure in Site24x7. You can also create custom dashboards.

• Infrastructure dashboard
• Inventory dashboard
• Health dashboard

Infrastructure Dashboard:

Once you've successfully added an Azure monitor, you'll be directed to the Infrastructure dashboard. This represents a NOC view of all the Azure resources discovered from your account. Hover on the hamburger icon beside the page title to Edit, Suspend, Delete the Azure monitor and discover resources (Discover Now) immediately. 

Highlights:

• See the number of Azure resources discovered in a single dashboard.
• View resources according to their status: UP, DOWN, or DISCOVERY IN PROGRESS.
  Any monitors that are shown as DISCOVERY IN PROGRESS are actually yet to be updated with their current status from your Azure account. This status is not related to the actual status of these Azure resources in the Azure portal.
• Filter resources based on resource groups, services, locations, and status.
• Click on a NOC box to go to that particular monitor's Summary page.

Inventory Dashboard:

Go to Azure > Inventory Dashboard. Like the Infrastructure dashboard, the Inventory dashboard gives you a view of the Azure resources discovered from your account. Hover on the hamburger icon beside the page title to Edit, Suspend, Delete the Azure monitor and discover resources (Discover Now) immediately.

Highlights:

• View all discovered Azure resources broken down by service type in a single pie chart. Hover over a section of the chart to see the resources under a particular service type.
• View the daily usage of critical resources for a set of service types.
  As of now, Site24x7 can only show the resource usage for the following service types:

  • Redis Caches
  • Network Interfaces
  • Service Bus
  • Server Farms
  • App Services
  • SQL Servers
  • Virtual Machines
• Under Inventory Details of Azure Resources, get a tabular view of all your Azure services, along with their respective number of locations, subscriptions, resources, and resource groups. You can also filter out services based on locations, resources, and resource groups. 

Custom Dashboard:

You can build your own dashboard that displays various key metrics across all your Azure resources. To start, navigate to Home > Dashboards > Custom Dashboards > + Create new. 

1. Provide a suitable name and description for your dashboard.
2. Under Widget Category, choose either from Performance Widgets, Top N Widgets, or Current Status Widgets.
3. Select All Monitors under Filter Monitors by Monitor Group. Under Monitor Type, select Azure.
4. Choose the desired Service Type template.
5. Pick your Azure resources under Choose Monitors to create your dashboard.
6. Select the required Time Period and drag and drop the widgets onto the working space.
7. When you're done, click on Done Customizing at the top of the page.

IT Automation (only for VMs)

You can add automations only for Azure resources. VMs have exclusive automation types, like starting or stopping a VM. Log in to Site24x7 and go to Admin > IT Automation Templates (+) > Add Automation Templates. Once an automation is added, you can schedule them to be executed one after the other. 

Forecasting

Predict future points of an Azure service performance metric (measurement of resource usage) based on historical observations.

Site24x7 uses machine learning and traditional time series forecasting models like exponential smoothing to predict future values. To choose the right model, the time series data is broken down into systematic and unsystematic components like level, trend, seasonality and, noise.

How to view forecast charts?

1. Go to Cloud > Azure > click on the Azure monitor. Click on any of the service types listed in the left panel, then select the desired resource monitor.
2. Navigate to the Forecast tab to view the charts.

Anomaly Dashboard

Azure monitoring is AI-powered and helps detect any unusual spikes or aberrations in your resource's critical performance attributes. This fine-tunes your resource performance and safeguards your Azure infrastructure from any unforeseen issues. To view the anomaly dashboard for Azure,

1. Log in to Site24x7 and go to Home > Anomaly Dashboard.
2. Select a time span from the Time Period drop-down. You can search for your Azure monitor's anomalies by looking up the name(s) in the Search Bar or filtering it out based on the various severity levels.

You can view the Anomaly Summary graph for the requested time period and the specific reason for each detected anomaly (listed under Anomaly History). To gather further insight on the root cause of performance issues, click on Analyze Root Cause provided along with the anomaly description (under Anomaly History). Learn more. 

Tags

Every resource can have one or more tags associated with it in the Azure portal. When resources are discovered and added for monitoring in Site24x7, the tags created in the Azure portal are automatically associated with the right resources in the Site24x7 web client. You can use these tags to include or exclude specific resources from monitoring. In addition to these imported tags, you can also create new tags or associate existing Site24x7 Tags with your resource monitors for easy filtering.

Inside an Azure Resource Monitor Page

All your Azure resources will be listed based on their service type. Click on any desired service type, and then on a particular resource monitor. You'll find five tabs on the Azure resource monitor page:

• Summary - View the performance metrics of your Azure resources, and the last polled data of your numeric attributes.
• Configuration Details - 
  • ID - This is the unique ID created for each Azure resource.
  • Name of the resource
  • Associated service type
  • Location
• Outages
• Inventory
• Log Report

Azure Deployment Manager (ADM) Health Check

Monitor the health of your services to detect any service health issues and ensure reliable deployments and high availability of your services. Please follow the steps below to start the health check:

1. Log in to Site24x7 and go to Azure > click on the Azure monitor > ADM Health Check.
2. Select the Subscriptions and Resource Groups for which you want to perform a health check. 
   
3. Click on Copy to Clipboard to copy the JSON snippet. 
   
4. Paste the copied JSON snippet into the healthChecks part of your ADM rollout JSON file.
   

Once completed, Site24x7 will begin the health check and verify every step of your Azure deployment(s). If successful, the deployment will move to the next service unit. If any issue is detected, Azure will stop the deployment and let you troubleshoot and reduce the scale of impact. 

Security

Site24x7 Azure monitoring is done using the OpenID Connect Authentication, an approved workflow by Microsoft. The Azure resources are discovered and monitored using the global application, Site24x7 App, that is maintained in Site24x7's Microsoft account.

Level of access Site24x7 App has in your Azure environment:

When you click on Grant Access to your Azure Account, a login request is initiated to Microsoft Azure using the Site24x7 App's Client ID and Secret Key. This is done using the OAuth 2 APIs. The prerequisites for the OpenID Connect Authentication includes logging in to your Microsoft Azure account that has access to the Active Directory tenant and Owner role for the subscription that needs to be monitored. Once your Microsoft credentials are entered in the Azure login page, the Site24x7 App will request for the permission, Delegated Permissions - Sign you in and read your profile and Access Azure Service Management as you (preview). This delegated permission is required to register the Site24x7 App in your Azure Active Directory. The Azure Graph APIs are used to register the Site24x7 App.

Role Access in your Azure Subscriptions:

In the Add Azure Monitor page, you will have to choose either the Reader or Contributor role to start monitoring the Azure resources. If you choose the Reader role, the Site24x7 App will only be able to collect the inventory details and performance metrics for your Azure subscription(s). On the other hand, if the Contributor role is assigned, the Site24x7 App will be able to collect inventory details, performance metrics for your Azure subscription(s), and perform the following write actions:

• Start VM(s)
• Stop VM(s)
• Install the Site24x7 VM agent extension for Windows and Linux

Once the Site24x7 App is successfully registered and given the required permissions, the resources are discovered using the Azure Management APIs and performance metrics are collected using the Azure Monitor REST API. Since the API calls are used to fetch the metrics, all these API calls need authentication to get succeeded. Thus, Site24x7 needs access to use these APIs as a user.

List of Azure Services Monitored by Site24x7

Site24x7 monitors 100+ Azure products including virtual machines, scale sets, storage accounts, IoT Hub, and Cosmos DB. View the list of Azure services that can be monitored by Site24x7 in our list of supported Azure services help document.

Licensing

The main Azure account consumes one basic monitor license. Every Azure resource/element uses up one basic monitor. For example, if you want to monitor an Azure account that has 10 resources, it will be consuming 11 basic monitors, as in:

• Main Azure account = 1 basic monitor
• 10 resources = 10 basic monitors
• Total = 11 basic monitors

If you have installed the server monitoring agent extension in your VMs, the VM will consume two basic monitors and the server monitor will consume two basic monitors.

FAQs

• Is it possible to monitor Azure if I don't have the permission to the main subscription of my Azure account?
• How does resource termination settings work for Azure?
• How will the newly added resource groups/service types, created in the Azure portal, be added for monitoring in the Site24x7 web client?
• Can I exclude certain Azure resource groups from monitoring by Site24x7?
• Why don't I see the newly discovered Azure resources in the Site24x7 web client?
• Why are some of the performance metrics for my Azure resources missing in the Site24x7 web client?
• On what basis are the Azure resources created as monitors in the Site24x7 web client?
• What will happen if I move an Azure resource from one subscription/resource group to another?
• How do I install the Site24x7 server monitoring agent extension, once my VM resources are discovered and added for monitoring?

For more questions, refer our complete list of Kbase articles.