Azure Monitor Reviews

I use Azure Monitor to monitor infrastructure. For instance, monitoring virtual machines on Azure, and I use it to monitor some management services like Azure Web Application, Azure Event Hub, Azure storage accounting, and Azure Kubernetes service. I am currently using several different use cases.

We use Azure Monitor to increase our visibility and help the company avoid disasters or application breakdowns. The operation team customizes metrics and thresholds to prevent breakdowns in applications.

I find the query language in this tool very beneficial, as it allows me to customize some dashboards and create alerts according to my thresholds and metrics. 

We can generate actions such as creating tickets in ServiceNow or sending email alerts. Another valuable feature of Azure Monitor is its integration with Azure Application Insights, which gives us a holistic view of our applications, encompassing the infrastructure and application layers.

The pricing model could be more flexible. It is not very clear, and the current model used by Microsoft for this component could be adjusted to be more customer-friendly.

I have used Azure Monitor for three to four years.

Azure Monitor is very stable. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate it as ten. We do not have any problems with stability.

The scalability of Azure Monitor is very good.

I would rate customer service an eight. It is comparable to other support from Microsoft. I have had some tickets for other components related to monitoring and application visibility.

Positive

I used other monitoring tools like Zabbix and New Relic. Zabbix is more comprehensive for monitoring infrastructure and network layers, while Azure Monitor is better for monitoring application layers.

The initial setup of Azure Monitor is very easy. On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the easiest, it is a ten.

The tool is very good, but the pricing model is not clear. While it is not the most expensive nor the cheapest, it falls in the middle. Microsoft could be more flexible with the pricing model.

I have used New Relic, Zabbix, Elastic, and Grafana for specific cases.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

We use the solution for the monitoring of the agent. Whatever resources we create, it will install one agent on that resource. It will collect all the matrices. It will do a detailed analysis of how much CPU, RAM, and memory should be utilized. We can get all this information by using Azure Monitor.

Azure Monitor is a very easy-to-use product in the cloud environment.

We cannot use AI services with the solution.

I have been using Azure Monitor for five years.

Azure Monitor is a very stable product, and I don't find any bugs in it.

Around 50,000 users are using the solution in our organization.

I have contacted the technical support team regarding how to use the solution, how to monitor, and what to do if we lose any logs. I am happy with the technical support team and the information they provided.

The solution’s pricing depends on how much logs it collects.

The solution is deployed on the cloud in our organization.

Most of the resources are inbuilt monitoring systems. Apart from those things, we can have more monitoring by using the analytics tools. Azure will provide the insights and analytics tool to collect data from all the resources, and we can store it in one centralized storage account.

We can analyze and do a lot of research on the logs. Azure will provide all these things, and it is a very easy-to-use product. Azure Monitor is not a standalone product. An inbuilt agent will be already running when you create any VM or machine. On top of that, we can see the logs as soon as the VM or machine is created.

The solution's documentation is very easy to understand. We can go through the documentation, and we can find the related information very quickly. Azure Monitor is very easy to use.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We use it for proactive infrastructure monitoring. It's being used for monitoring the key metrics and availability of infrastructure.

We most probably use its latest version.

It's a Microsoft native tool, so it works well with other Microsoft technologies, which is predominantly what our customer end-user base is.

Automation is a key benefit of it as well. You can link one box to automatically resolve the issues off the back of another. There's quite a lot you can do with it.

The query builder could be better. In comparison to other monitoring tools, in order to use Azure Monitor, your engineers need to have KQL experience. If they don't, it's not intuitive as a system. They need to understand KQL and get the right queries to get the value that they want, whereas a lot of out-of-the-box solutions, such as FrameFlow and Datadog, can be given to somebody untrained, and the UI will guide them through what they need to do. You lose some customization with that, but you don't need to train people on it. It would be good if Microsoft had some form of query builder in place so that you can choose a metric and it writes the code for you. Some kind of AI elements would help with that skill gap for organizations.

Their support also needs to be improved. I've had a lot of issues with their support.

I've been using this solution for two years.

I've not had any issues with it so far. I'd rate it a ten out of ten in terms of stability.

You can scale it pretty easily. I'd rate it a nine out of ten in terms of scalability. 

We probably have about 30 people using this solution.

Their support is not great. We pay for Premier Support because we're a partner, and even that's pretty bad. I've had a lot of issues with their support. It has nothing to do with Microsoft Azure Monitor as a tool. I'd rate Microsoft's support for any of their systems at the absolute lowest number that I possibly can because it's pretty bad. The time to get engineers is an issue, and their skills and knowledge are also questionable. My team is more knowledgeable than them on some of the platform-related things.

They also make a lot of mistakes. They have brought the platform down a couple of times in recent months. There has been a whole heap of stuff. I've had quite lengthy conversations with our account manager about how poor the service is, and there isn't anything they're going to do about it because it's at the organizational level. It's not one team. It seems Microsoft is going through some struggles at the moment.

Negative

We used FrameFlow. We switched to being native. It's a Microsoft native tool.

The deployment duration depends on the use case. It depends on what you want. You don't deploy Azure Monitor itself. It's not like other tools where you have to install nodes and install the software and deploy it. It comes natively with Azure as a platform, so the implementation time is just dependent on what the client wants out of it. For our use case, we set up a template of about 15 to 20 key metrics that we monitor, which probably doesn't take longer than a day to deploy. It's all templated. We just run a bunch of CLI commands, and it deploys those templates, but if you have a customer who wants to start monitoring more intricate or complex things such as SQL databases and applications, you can probably spend months on it.

In terms of the number of people required, one person can do it if he or she has the skills for it.

I don't really measure return on investment. It's about visibility. It's about providing the service for us. If we compare the implementation versus the visibility we get, we do get a return. It doesn't take that long to deploy, but it can subsequently create a lot of visibility. So, its return on investment is probably okay.

Its cost depends on the ingestion of the logs. It could go anywhere. For an out-of-the-box platform such as FrameFlow, you pay pretty much a fixed price and you get what you get, whereas, with something like Azure Monitor, you pay by the ingestion charge, so you can have one client who pays hardly anything for the same alerts, and another client pays loads and loads. From experience, Azure itself isn't a cheap system. It's not a cheap tool at all. If you don't configure it correctly, it's really expensive. I'd rate it a nine out of ten.

I'd advise learning KQL before you think about it. If you know KQL, you can do a lot with it. If you understand KQL, then it's really powerful, and you can do a lot with it. If you don't understand it, you should probably steer away from it because you won't be able to do much. You won't get much value out of it.

I'd rate Azure Monitor a seven out of ten.

I am an Azure architect and present the solution to customers for use in monitoring infrastructures, applications, and containers.

The solution very easily integrates with Azure services and in one click you can monitor your resource. You do not need to set up any virtual machines.

The visualization of logs, metrics, and the workbook is easy. 

The solution supports services from past YAZ functions or containers.

The APM needs to be improved to compare with Dynatrace or Elastic. For example, monitoring user sessions is interesting in Dynatrace or Elastic but is not dynamic in the solution. The static view is very basic. 

The monitoring of Kubernetes clusters needs improvement to be on par with competitors. With the solution, you need to monitor the process, deployment, application, and the security inside the cluster. This is not the case with other products. 

The solution should monitor or integrate with other cloud providers like AWS or DCP. That would be valuable because some customers have multi-cloud environments so they go with third parties to accommodate their needs. Because of this, customers say the solution is not interesting for them. 

I have used the solution for four years. 

The solution is very stable. 

The solution is very scalable by design. 

I have not needed technical support. 

The setup is easy. The solution is cloud native so there is no deployment. You just configure the solution in Azure and it is ready to go. 

Configuration can take one to five days depending on the complexity of your environment. 

My customers hire Azure consultants, engineers, or infrastructure administrators for configurations.

One technician can handle ongoing maintenance. 

The solution is a pay-as-you-go consumption service and is the least expensive in the market. 

I rate pricing an eight out of ten. 

Most of my current customers are oriented to Dynatrace. 

If you use Azure as a cloud provider, then I recommend the solution. It is easy to setup and integrate.

If monitoring the performance of applications is very important to you, then I recommend Dynatrace or Elastic APM. 

The solution has improved over the years and things are coming in the roadmap like container integration. Application monitoring was improved in the past. Some things need improvement but a lot of things have improved already. 

I rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

As an Azure solution architect, I am currently assisting a client who requires a quote for a report comparison between New Relic and Azure Monitor. Given my experience with Azure Monitor, my goal is to showcase its capabilities and potentially eliminate the need for New Relic in their environment.

Azure Monitor is primarily a web application that offers comprehensive monitoring capabilities for Azure resources. It encompasses various aspects, including logging and application insights. With Azure Monitor, you can configure alerts and rules based on specific conditions, such as triggering an alert when CPU usage exceeds 80%. The cost of alerts and notifications in Azure Monitor is relatively affordable, typically charging around 10 cents per alert per rule, allowing for a large volume of SMS notifications, such as up to a hundred thousand.

Comparatively, New Relic also offers cost-effective solutions. However, it is important to note that New Relic's pricing structure includes charges for user creation. Normal user creation can cost around $50, while admin users may incur a charge of approximately $99. 

On the other hand, when using Azure Monitor, if your organization already has an Azure subscription with Azure Active Directory (AD), you can leverage the existing user access and permissions, granting appropriate rights and access to the Azure portal as needed.

Among the valuable features of this solution, Application Insights stands out as one of the most significant. It provides insights into application performance and helps identify issues and bottlenecks. 

Azure Monitor offers a notification feature that enables proactive monitoring and alerting. This feature proves particularly useful in ensuring timely responses to critical events and maintaining overall system health.

In terms of pricing, Azure Monitor's billing based on data size can sometimes lead to increased costs, especially when developers need to purge data frequently.

While there are mechanisms in place to track and manage this, there is room for improvement in terms of optimizing data pausing and related processes.

Enhancements in this area could help mitigate potential billing concerns and provide a more seamless experience for users.

I have been working with Azure Monitor for three years.

I would rate the stability of Azure Monitor an eight and a half out of ten. It's pretty stable.

During the early years of 2017 or 2018, the server faced significant challenges in terms of flexibility and stability. However, in recent years, notable improvements have been made, resulting in a much more stable environment.

I would rate the scalability an eight and a half out of ten.

Overall, I find Azure Monitor to be quite impressive. It's worth noting that there may be some aspects I haven't explored yet since learning opportunities arise daily. However, based on my experience with the features I have utilized thus far, I am genuinely satisfied with Azure Monitor's performance and capabilities.

Azure Monitor is applicable to companies of all sizes, ranging from small to mid-size to enterprise-level organizations. However, it's important to exercise caution and use it wisely, as Azure can become costly if resources are used unnecessarily. By utilizing Azure Monitor efficiently, you can effectively manage costs, optimize licensing, and ensure that resources are allocated appropriately to maximize value. 

When anticipating high traffic on virtual machines or app servers, you have the flexibility to adjust memory usage and CPU utilization accordingly. This allows you to effectively manage resources based on varying traffic patterns. Additionally, if you need to track logs and gain insights into application behavior, utilizing Application Insights is recommended. However, it's important to consider the data retention period carefully. Storing data for seven or fifteen days strikes a balance between retaining necessary information and managing costs, as charges are based on the storage size in gigabytes (GB), which can be relatively expensive.

I would rate the technical support a nine and a half out of ten. 

The technical support provided for Azure services is highly commendable. Whenever a critical support ticket, such as a P1 level issue, is raised, the response is prompt and efficient. The support team promptly reaches out, assigns a dedicated engineer, and provides assistance to resolve the issue effectively. My personal experience with Azure technical support has been excellent.

The response time of Azure technical support is commendable. They have a system in place where you can create tickets based on the severity of the issue. If you designate a ticket as P1 (indicating the highest priority), they will promptly reach out to you, ensuring immediate attention and allocation of a dedicated engineer to resolve the matter efficiently.

The initial setup is straightforward.

Our focus is on migrating from an on-premises environment to Azure, as we aim to leverage the benefits of the public cloud. Given my extensive experience with Azure and multiple successful cloud projects, I can confidently say that Azure offers significant advantages in terms of cost-effectiveness, performance, and comprehensive services. 

By using Azure, we can consolidate all our requirements in one place, benefiting from the comprehensive suite of Microsoft offerings available within the Azure ecosystem.

As an Azure Solution Architect and Azure DevOps Engineer, my role revolves around overseeing and managing Azure solutions. I am responsible for designing and implementing Azure-based architectures, as well as ensuring the smooth operation of Azure DevOps processes.

As part of your project analysis, you are tasked with determining whether Azure Monitor or New Relic is better suited for your specific project requirements. This comparison will help you evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each solution and make an informed decision based on your client's needs and project background.

In our evaluation, our primary focus has been on comparing Azure Monitor with New Relic rather than considering other alternatives. Given my extensive experience with Microsoft technologies, particularly in Microsoft Azure, I aim to promote Azure and showcase its capabilities as a robust alternative to New Relic. My goal is to eliminate the reliance on New Relic and emphasize the value and benefits of leveraging Azure in our project.

In case you encounter numerous application issues, such as errors or performance concerns, Azure Monitor offers the solution of enabling Application Insights. This feature allows you to gain valuable insights into your application's behavior. Additionally, Azure Monitor provides the flexibility to create rules and set up alerts. With up to ten alerts per hour across ten distinct rules, you can effectively monitor and respond to critical events in a timely manner.

I would rate Azure Monitor an eight out of ten.

Azure Monitor is very good. We periodically monitor the performance of our database and servers, and we can manage that easily.

We have a lot of applications running, and we have asked our technical team to monitor their performance.

It is already integrated with many platforms. It has a lot of important export APIs, and GitHub is integrated. So, integration is not a problem with Azure Monitor.

What I like about Azure Monitor is that it performs well, is stable, and is easy to use.

We can see how much consumption is happening because it's linked to the payment. We want to know the data consumption for a period of time, and all this information is available there. It's used to monitor the data.

What I feel is when I open a screen of Azure, some places are very complex to navigate to. It is not very user-friendly when it comes to accessing certain sections. 

For example, finding the billing screen is not easy. Accessing the tabs can be complex because there is too much data on a single page.

So, it becomes difficult for someone who is not technically inclined to navigate.

So the UI could be improved.

It's been a few years, like two to three years.

At the end of the day, we have seen that it is more of a usage for us. We can monitor our applications and their performance.

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten.

Every time the version is updated, so it's scalable. Azure keeps on updating the solution, so it is very much scalable.

The initial setup is straightforward. It's a complete Azure cloud solution.

It is enabled by default. Once we deploy, we just have to trigger it. As long as we have the platform available, it comes as a default option with the subscription for Azure.

It comes with enablement already.

My team took less than an hour to set it up.

It's a very cost-effective solution. Since we are using Microsoft products, mainly built on .NET, it works very well. That's one advantage here. It's a very good ROI for us.

I have saved almost 50% of my costs compared to other cloud solutions. We are almost two years in, and we are paying every month. They are being billed, actually. We have a pay-as-you-go account. It is very good.

If we have more usage, you know, you have to pay more. If the usage is very low, for example, all my development servers are inside Azure, if my technical team is consolidating or developing the solution on their own desktop or laptop, they will not use the cloud servers. So, at that time, we are not being charged.

One thing that is actually very advantageous is that pay as you go is very helpful in curbing the cost.

Every month, we pay a licensing fee. It's cheaper. We used Google for a month or two, and it was very expensive. But when we changed the same solution to Azure, our costs were 50% less than what Google was charging us. From a pricing point of view, Azure is the cheapest.

AWS is now coming to us. They're ready to give us a solution for free for the next year. They're ready to give a free tenant to monitor our application. But at this point, we have been using Azure. It is very cost-effective compared to AWS and Google. Azure is much cheaper. It is a pay-as-you-go model. 

At the end of the day, I would say it's a very good product for us because we can monitor how our applications are performing. This is very important for us because it's our own application. 

We need to know its performance, collect data, visualize, and analyze. We can also improve our product based on the results we see from the monitor.

Any issues, we can go into the logs and trace them. We can do tracing as well. There are a lot of features.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.

My recommendation:

If you use a Microsoft product, for example, if you are developing a product in .NET or other Microsoft products, you can use Azure. It's very scalable and works very well. There are many native applications in Azure Systems that can be utilized. 

For example, if you develop your backend in .NET and use an SQL database or even MongoDB, you can use Azure because it's a native competitor for Microsoft.

We are in a consulting firm. Based on the requirement, we utilize our solutions. If any application requires specific monitoring, then we use Azure Monitor. We try to utilize the application functionality available, subject to the application requirements.

Azure Monitor helps us manage and monitor based on the requirements set by our clients. It allows us to provide solutions effectively.

The security and support are good. I am a part of the solution team and provide solutions related to monitoring, backup, security, and hosting for our clients.

No improvements are needed from my perspective.

I have been working with Azure Monitor as a consultant for around two years.

I would rate the stability at a nine out of ten since you cannot stop all threats. That said, Azure Monitor provides sufficient protection.

Azure Monitor is scalable from the infrastructure point of view.

Whenever we require support, we receive it, and the availability is high. I would rate it ten out of ten.

Positive

Organizations also use Azure Sentinel for better details and more options, however, we have not replaced Azure Monitor.

Setup is handled by the implementation team and is considered straightforward.

Our implementation team is well aware of the process and parameters required for deploying Azure Monitor.

Pricing is handled by the finance department, so I don't have insight into it.

Monitoring is a part of many applications with their own dashboards. We also use Azure Sentinel.

I recommend Azure to others because there are multiple service providers, however, Azure meets our requirements well. It depends on the client's needs and availability.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Our main focus is on monitoring the utilization of resources, specifically within the ARRIS environment, where we utilize MySQL as the server. We actively track metrics such as CPU and memory utilization, as well as internet usage. The primary objective is to closely monitor resource utilization, providing insights that help us determine when adjustments to resource allocations are necessary.

One standout feature is its user-friendly dashboard. It simplifies the process of monitoring by providing a comprehensive overview of metrics, particularly in terms of resource utilization. The dashboard allows us to easily track various metrics and quickly understand the overall health of our system.

Establishing a threshold for resource utilization below 40% over a specified duration could trigger an automated scaling down, and vice versa. This way, the system could dynamically adjust configurations based on predefined conditions, such as scaling up or turning off resources. Enhancing and reaching a level of detail that facilitates pinpointing and addressing issues at such a refined level within the application and database components would be helpful.

We have been using it for one year.

We currently find it stable since our present requirements are relatively straightforward, and we are utilizing its basic functionalities.

The scalability is highly commendable with around three hundred users currently using it within our organization. The application we are employing primarily caters to the education sector. It is currently in use by the Ministry of Education, in conjunction with their division offices, and the plan is to extend its usage to the school level. Upon full implementation, we anticipate the user base to grow significantly, reaching an estimated range of twenty to thirty thousand users.

We have utilized Microsoft's Azure technical support services, both from the global cloud support and the local support team in the Philippines. Most of our technical support requests to Microsoft Azure have revolved around resource allocation issues. Initially, we deployed services across different regions, but we later consolidated in the Asian region. However, due to limited space in the Asian region, Azure imposes restrictions on certain resources.

We used New Relic. While Azure Monitor covers resource aspects, New Relic excels in providing a thorough examination of application issues. New Relic can precisely identify problems related to resource allocation, pinpointing issues within the application, whether they originate from application resources or the database.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We operate as a collaborative effort, partnering with Microsoft's education group, which supports the Ministry of Education. Under our agreement, we have an Azure expert within our team whom we can approach for support and assistance in implementation and deployment.

Since we are using the basic set, it is more cost-effective compared to other third-party APM solutions.

It is a more seamless and effective monitoring solution compared to third-party options like New Relic. The alignment of Azure Monitor with our Azure-based infrastructure simplifies the monitoring process, ensuring all applications and resources are easily accessible within the Azure ecosystem. While third-party APM solutions, such as New Relic or NetNix, are useful for troubleshooting specific issues, they face limitations when applied to Azure app services. These services often have restrictions and prerequisites that impede the full utilization of third-party APM for cloud monitoring, especially with the latest Azure technologies. Given these considerations, our recommendation is twofold. For those utilizing the latest Azure technologies, Azure Monitor is advised due to its seamless integration. If choosing a third-party APM provider, it's essential to confirm compatibility with the latest Azure technologies to ensure effective monitoring without encountering potential issues. Overall, I would rate it seven out of ten.