Azure Monitor Reviews

Our use case for this solution is application monitoring using the Insights app. We have about five specialists in our operations team and we also have an application management team of around 10 people. There are plans to increase usage but that's something that is driven by the customers that we provide our services to. We partner with Azure Monitor and I work as a SW technologist and process unit manager in the company. 

There are a few good features in this solution. First, it's integrated with Azure DevOps. Second, it has good load gathering and very good analysis. Finally, the metrics gathering, even though it requires some actions and application level, is also fairly good.

I think the product could be improved if they were to work on automation related to gathering metrics from more applications without the need for instrumentation and things like that. I'd like them to work more on that.

Additional features they could include would be more automations related to applications and monitoring, user experience monitoring on the application level. Improvement on technical support would also be helpful. 

I've been using the solution for six months. 

This is a stable solution.

I haven't tested the solution for scalability but from the specifications it seems that it would be easily scalable. 

The technical support could be improved - their response time can be quite slow. 

Prior to using Azure Monitor I used SolarWinds. I think that SolarWinds is more infrastructure level oriented while Azure covers infrastructure but also covers the application side. That's why we migrated to Azure.

The initial setup was very straightforward. Transfer to the solution required some training so I think in total it took us about two weeks. 

Before choosing Azure Monitor, we evaluated it compared to SolarWinds and Dynatrace, which was a more expensive solution.

This is a good enough product for anyone wanting something that might not be top of the range but it does the work easily, is simple to configure and is a fair price.  

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

The main use case for this solution includes infrastructure monitoring, Application Insights and APM.

One of the most useful aspects of this solution is the out-of-the-box functionality on all areas, especially on Application Insights, zero instrumentation, and artificial intelligence for event correlation.

This solution could be improved with more out-of-the-box functionalities and artificial intelligence to complete event correlation.

I have used this solution for four years. 

This is a stable solution. 

This is a scalable solution.

I have previously used Dynatrace and Datadog. Dynatrace is the most expensive solution but also the fastest to produce results. I would rate Datadog to fall between Azure Monitor and Dynatrace. Azure Monitor is the most cost-effective of the three solutions. 

The initial setup is relatively easy. It requires time and involves a lot of work.

Azure Monitor is a full-scale solution that could work for small to larger size companies. For a large enterprise, Azure Monitor may require additional tools to complement the offering.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten. 

We are doing the Azure cloud transformation by moving to link up the application to the cloud. Monitoring is one part of application's transformation.

I only work with the cloud-based model. 

They can simplify the overall complexity since you have multiple data sources in the cloud for monitoring. It's quite simple, but there are so many portals. It takes time to work with it. If they could simplify the user configuration, that would be good.

The integration capabilities could use some improvements.

The product is stable.

It's a service from Microsoft, so it will scale.

I have not contacted the technical support for Azure Monitor.

It is easy to create a ticket. The overall Microsoft Azure could be faster.

This was only the traditional basic monitoring for Azure.

It depends of the things that you're going to monitor. For example, when configuring a third-party social Internet application on IaaS services and PaaS, I don't have a software development background. Therefore, it's quite difficult to ask the infrastructure guys, "What is something that I need to monitor from the Azure's SQL Server databases and infrastructure."

It's a fast service to deploy. It's more about defining the configuration. You need to find the right attributes to monitor. It takes about two weeks (10 to 20 days) to assign what to monitor. The actual configuration is quite fast. 

I did a private installation for the customer's Intranet.

We have a financial application that needs to be working, and for our organization, it's important to be able to see the status of the overall application, which we have now. That's our primary use case for the solution. 

The solution integrates well with the Microsoft platform.

In comparison to New Relic, which I've used before, it's a bit more complicated. It's not as easy to use. It also took some time to get it working. The implementation needs to be simpler.

Right now, we're planning to increase usage. We're migrating from on-premises to the cloud. Currently, we have 25 users.

We previously used New Relic. Azure Monitor does a better job of integrating with Microsoft, which is one of its main selling points.

The deployment of the solution is somewhat complex because not all the tools are easy to understand. Just like New Relic, you use the SQL language to do the requests that you want to have specific for your APM. That's a little bit different than I'm used to. I'm trying to learn the language right now.

Currently, we are using all deployment models: public cloud, private, hybrid, and on-premises. Since we already have Azure, they deliver the monitoring solution as part of our environment.

Azure is more integrated into the infrastructure than New Relic was. You can use infrastructure components versus the analytics tool, which is a separate component that you can use for multiple things in different ways.

Currently, I would rate the solution eight out of ten. It's working very well. It does exactly what I expect it to do. I think it's a good solution. It's very well supported by Microsoft.

We are currently testing the Azure Monitor, yet we've not turned it on for production yet.

We were looking for a monitoring tool. We needed a few features, and then we thought that Azure Monitor might not be able to do everything for us out of the box. There might be some development work that may be involved if we have to use Azure Monitor. However, we've really not used it. We are just trying it out now.

The major thing we will use it for is to monitor applications and then resources. For the ones that are on the app services, they are straightforward; however, we're looking at monitoring applications that are running on the virtual machines, on VMs. That's not straightforward. You need to be able to use some APIs to be able to do the logs from the applications that are running on the VM and all that. 

We are in the POC phase. We're still testing things out. 

I'm not working with it directly and therefore haven't noted any outstanding features. 

I'm not working with it directly and therefore haven't noted any missing features.

The setup so far has been complicated.

It might not have all of the capabilities we will need. 

We've barely used it. We just tested it now. We are now trying to turn on our production environment for a while. We just started using it a week or two ago.

We've barely used the solution for production. It's hard to grade the stability at this point. 

I'm not working with the solution directly and can't comment on the scalability.

From what I've seen so far, for our use case, it's a bit complicated if we have to monitor directly from the virtual machine or if we need to pull logs and stuff from the virtual machine to create an API and all that. You need a developer to be able to create an API for you so that the Azure Monitor can consume or pull the logs. From the discussions I've had with the cloud engineer and what we've seen, that area is a bit complicated. That said, it's not like it can't be done.

The pricing is a bit tricky with regard to the storage and then the load. You need to be very particular about what the storage is about. You need to consider the size of storage you need and then the load that you be pushing as well. If you look at the fact sheet, then it is expensive. However, you can't go with the fact sheet since the fact sheet doesn't factor in the environment to determine the cost estimation.

It could be cheap, or it could be expensive, depending on how you deploy or configure it.

We've also looked at SolarWinds. We are looking at ManageEngine, and we're also looking at Foglight Evolve. These are some of the solutions that we are looking at for monitoring.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using. We usually just turn it on. 

The upside to the solution is if you are working in a Microsoft or Azure environment, it makes things easier. It's like a Mercedes mechanic working on a Mercedes car as opposed to a Toyota. If you are within the Azure umbrella, it's easier. However, it depends on the company and what it wants to achieve.

I'd rate it six out of ten. 

I use the SaaS version. I use Azure Monitor to collect and index logs for my systems. It allows me to search through my logs and find bugs and mistakes. From there, it helps me report these mistakes.

We use this solution every day. I plan on continuing to use this solution for specific parts of projects but for other portions of my projects, I plan on using DataDog or something similar. 

It's difficult to say as I only use a small part of this solution; however, It can be quite difficult to use at times. I think there are better solutions available. 

In my opinion, they should improve the overall user experience, especially when it comes to indexing and searching collective logs. The search language they've developed is quite difficult to understand. 

I have been using Azure Monitor for roughly two years. 

Azure Monitor is very stable. 

I've never had to contact technical support for this solution. I haven't encountered any issues that required their assistance.

We used to use an on-premise solution, but I cannot remember the name of it. We switched over to Azure because it was better suited to our needs. 

As this is a cloud solution, the initial setup was very easy. Deployment took only 10-15 minutes — it's very simple. 

I was not involved with the licensing of this solution.

In my opinion, Azure Monitor is not the best solution available on the market. My advice is to check out other solutions before you decide to implement Azure Monitor.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give Azure Monitor a rating of five. The user experience needs to be improved. It takes a lot of time and organization to learn how to use it properly. It's much more difficult to use compared to other solutions. 

We are using multiple monitoring tools at the moment and are looking for a single solution that can monitor everything. As part of our current setup, we are using Azure Monitor to monitor our network.

It ensures that our network is responding correctly and looks to see if there are any anomalies.

The most valuable feature is that it ensures our servers are up.

When something goes down, we want the option to have automation in place to get it back up again as quickly as possible.

It is not very user-friendly so the GUI can be improved.

We have just started using Azure Monitor.

We have had no issues with respect to stability.

Scalability has not been a problem.

We have used other monitoring tools and one of the advantages of Azure Monitor is that it is easier for us to use because we're mainly a Microsoft shop.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. We deployed in stages over about a month.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this tool is to take your time with it and see if it is the right one for you. If it is, then get rid of all of the other tools.

This is a good product but it is not very user-friendly at this stage.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

We are an operation center so we use this solution mainly to monitor all of our clients' environments and to help them with technical issues. So it's mainly promoting clients' environments, technical issues, and being proactive.

I am impressed by the reporting on the average eight ports that we get from this solution.

They need to work on a more hybrid deployment that will allow us to monitor local on-premise deployments and connect to different systems. I would like to see more integration. 

In the next version, I would like to see more mobile applications. The current support is based on email so customers don't have full support. I think the developers need to put some effort into the support team to put skilled people in place and provide phone access.

We've had no major issues, so the program is stable.

I believe the program is scalable.

The initial setup was not that complex but it was definitely not straightforward. You need to have certain design planning in place. We are integrators, so we have an internal team who was responsible for it.

The duration of deployment depends on the size and the number of servers that you need to monitor. Sometimes it takes 20 or 30 days, sometimes takes five days or even less. So it depends on the client size and how much he or she wants to evolve and develop. 

I would say that one person is enough to do the deployment; it really depends on the kind of business.

Azure offers more intelligence than other solutions. Other solutions mainly focus on the network with hardware, but Azure is more open to other platforms.

My advice to others would be to do design planning. I believe there is room for improvement, especially when it comes to mobile applications. That is why my rating is eight out of ten.