Azure Monitor Reviews

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. 

Our company is a service integrator and we use the solution to monitor logs, metrics, and applications for customers. We have 200 users throughout our company. 

The tools for logs and metrics are pretty good and easy to use. We can do metric monitoring, log monitoring, and prepare queries to monitor something based on  customers' requirements.  

The Kusto query language is powerful and similar to SPL. We can do a lot of things with the language. 

The solution is very easy to use and maintain. 

Alerts cannot be configured to monitor at a certain point in time. For example, we might want to alert people at zero hours but that is not possible. Splunk can accomplish this and its alerts are far better than the solution's options. The alerting mechanism is not up to the market. 

The default interface should be improved. You can prepare your own dashboard by using custom query language, but the default interface is not good. 

I have been using the solution for almost three years. 

The solution is very stable. 

The solution is scalable. 

Technical support is good and very helpful. 

Support does have some limitations or challenges because they can only help with things they know. For example, we contacted them about an alert issue because we could not log off the solution's Event Hub component. Unfortunately, they were not able to help. 

Overall, support is very helpful and provides an immediate response. When they cannot help, it is a product issue. 

I have experience with Splunk, AppDynamics, BMC Proactive Document Management, Microsoft ACCM, New Relic, and Grafana. 

The setup was challenging initially because we were not familiar with the solution. Now that we have experience, everything is easy. 

We implemented the solution in-house.

Ongoing maintenance is performed by three members of our team. 

The solution is very costly because you have to pay for various things such as adding to logs and internet alerts. 

Logging costs are very high so should be lowered. Companies who log one TB or more will have very high costs. We should be able to log in a storage account to save costs.

Splunk is also very costly. 

The best solution depends on use cases.

AppDynamics or New Relic are the best products for application performance management.

Splunk is the best for logging and the solution is the second best. 

If you have a Microsoft environment, then you should use the solution as much as possible.

Azure Metrics is free and covers a lot of features. You can set it up and use it for monitoring.

You can definitely use the solution for logging but be aware that there are costs. 

I rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

We use the solution for only production monitoring mainly, however, we are trying to engage it with the quality flows for moving the code between platforms from dev to test environments, et cetera. We'll implement this procedure afterward.

The detailed logging is great. Detailed logging is the most impressive part. Also, we are observing our cost on the live environment. We know what kind of budget is required. 

Also, we are getting all the problematic area details, so we can arrange ourselves according to the application development part. 

The alert parts are great. It's crucial for our site, just getting the alerts on time.

It's easy to set up.

It is a robust, stable product.

The solution scales well. 

We are sometimes confused about the details. We would like to have a flow in terms of how a new application should engage with Azure Monitor. We must understand: what is the most crucial part of our monitoring or support? We are not very good at it yet. 

Currently, it seems it's complicated to get the correct information in terms of what to do and how things work. Maybe it would help if they offered some guidance or written guides. For example, we say that project manager should follow their quality issues before putting the application into production. It's so complicated from their side for the project managers. Some kind of simplification is required for people engaged in the platform. 

Still, it's very new, and we will be gaining experience, and we may see much more substantial things in the future as we uncover more capabilities.

We've newly engaged with the product. We've only used it for a few months at this point. 

The solution is very stable. It's robust. The performance is excellent. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. The reliability is high. 

We'll continue with Azure Monitor.

It is a scalable solution. It's not a problem if you need to expand it. It reaches about 200 users right now. 

We do have access support and get it when we need it. We are satisfied. They are okay. 

We've also used New Relic. We moved away due to the cost. 

The solution is straightforward and very simple. It's not complex at all. We're effortlessly engaging with it. We implemented ten applications in one week.

Only two people are needed for deployment and maintenance. They are admins. 

We did not need to get the help of consultants or integrators. We handled the setup ourselves in-house. 

The licenses require a subscription based on the log file sizing.

The pricing is better than, for example, New Relic. New Relic was too costly for us. 

Based on what we see right now, I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. Maybe, as we use it more, we will rate it higher in the future. Currently, we are very new to using this product. 

Azure Monitor can be used to monitor on-prem servers. You can install the agent on a server on-premise and you can pull out whatever telemetry you want. Additionally, you can install it on servers that are on the public cloud. It's similar to hybrid solutions. However, it depends on the use case. If there's a server on-premise, you deploy the server in AWS or GCP. If the server is on Azure itself, then it plugs directly in which is a hybrid setup.

Azure Monitor can be used if you are trying to look for how all the applications are tied together, such as application mapping. It helps to know what ports are open, what services are running on certain servers as one. 

We are able to monitor CPU utilization for specific servers to determine if they are running specific types of workloads or high resource utilization type workloads. We use Azure Monitor to be able to see if the server gets to a certain threshold, such as 70 percent CPU utilization, then send an alert to the operation center or reliability center to go look at it. They could then expand or increase the CPU resource there to fix the issue. The tool is used for monitoring purposes.

Azure Monitor has helped our organization to have insights into issues and informs us before an issue becomes a very critical stage. It provides us a baseline on how to prevent serious issues in the future. You don't want it to get to 90 percent usage, if you catch it at 70 percent, it helps preserve the lifespan of that sever or allow your services to keep running efficiently or effectively. It keeps the availability of whatever service that you're running on that server, is in check. This is one of the most important parts of the service.

Azure Monitor is useful because of the useful application insights and telemetry, such as metrics and logs.

Azure Monitor could improve the visualization aspect and integrate better with other third-party services.

I have been using Azure Monitor for approximately four years.

Azure Monitor is a stable solution.

The scalability of Azure Monitor is very good because it is on a public platform.

We have approximately 500 users using this solution. We are extensively using Azure Monitor and we are always adding to it.

The support we have received from Microsoft has been good. Depending on the issue you might be facing, they could respond within less than 24 hours during business hours.

The initial setup of Azure Monitor is straightforward. The process took us approximately one hour.

We did the implementation of Azure Monitor in-house.

The price of the solution is reasonable. 

I have evaluated Datadog before choosing Azure Monitor.

I rate Azure Monitor an eight out of ten.

I am not using the product by myself. I recommend the tool to our customers. Our company's customers use Azure Monitor in their DevOps practices since it offers easy-to-monitor components. Usually, we augment the product since DXC has its own tool. In our company, we also deploy our own tools on Dynatrace. We also have our own set of tools called DXC Platform X, which gets deployed to the cloud, and the native cloud tools like Azure Monitor are augmented by our own tool.

I don't know what specific features the customer gets from the tool. I know the standard monitoring is done on Azure Monitor. In our company, aside from being active with the setup, we also take care of the notification setup so that the help desk and right people are alerted in case there is an issue.

It is not just Azure Monitor that my company deals with since we augment it with our own DXC Platform X, which DXC developed for the cloud. DXC Platform X has its own set of tools for the cloud.

It would be good if there could be an integration between Azure Monitor and Azure Arc. The integration between Azure Monitor and Azure Arc can create a different product. Using Azure Monitor and Azure Arc separately to monitor different environments can be complicated. I think there is a need to blend everything into one product so that you can monitor everything, like the on-premises, AWS or Azure with one tool.

I have been using Azure Monitor for more than two years.

The tool's pricing is very good. I could say that Microsoft offers different cost models, which are listed on the product's website. It starts free of cost and goes up to a certain level, and then one just needs to pay above that. Usually, clients don't have to pay to choose anything, which is the biggest advantage of the hosting model.

The tool is a native product of Azure. Some good integration capabilities are present in the tool. It also offers availability, and the tool's pricing is very good.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

I use the Azure Monitor in my company since it is a part of every solution we send to our customers. From a monitoring perspective, the use cases attached to the tool are enormous. Usually, my company uses it to monitor all Azure services that our customers use. My company also uses Azure Monitor if we want to monitor our customers' on-premises environment. In the case of any third-party cloud environment, my company suggests that customers have Azure Arc implemented in their environment. With it, they can monitor usage and monitoring while having one single dashboard for all their environments.

The solution's most valuable features are its ease of use and support for multiple environments. With the tool, the customer can have a single dashboard for all the environments.

The product should integrate well with other tools or clouds in the future, as it is one of the areas where the product currently has certain shortcomings.

I have experience with Azure Monitor.

It is a pretty stable solution.

It is a very scalable solution.

I am actively working with around 20 to 25 customers, and I know that the monitoring process is a part of every solution. As a part of our company's best practices, we provide a pitch associated with Azure Monitor to each and every customer.

The solution's technical support team is fast, knowledgeable, and customer-friendly.

I have experience with Azure Backup.

The product's initial setup phase is straightforward.

To have a simple monitoring system in place, I don't think it will take more than a day to enable it with the basic dashboards. If customers have a very unique requirement and need a dashboard of a specific type, then in such cases, it takes some time to develop the dashboard and publish the data. The deployment and time to create a dashboard can keep varying.

The solution is deployed on the cloud. The tool supports another cloud on-premises as well.

The product offers a pay-as-you-go model to users. The charges are to be paid according to the usage of the product.

Azure Monitor's integration capabilities make integrations very easy. The tool supports on-premises and other cloud environments.

I suggest that for each and every solution in place, one should have a monitoring tool because it is a crucial component of any solution.

I don't think that much about AI-related stuff when it comes to the tool since I don't think it would make much of a difference.

The value provided by the product stems from the fact that its customers can monitor their environment on a single dashboard and can look at areas like usage, triggers, and IOPS and CPU memory utilization. If there are any alerts, one can set certain triggers in the tool.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We use Azure Monitor to monitor all the infrastructure that we have in the cloud.

Azure Monitor gives us the observability to check everything that we have in the cloud. We can set up some alarms to better manage what we have in the cloud.

Azure Monitor has a direct connection with the infrastructure in the cloud. It's like a built-in feature in public services.

It's really complex to retrieve or query the logs in Azure Monitor. They have another query language, and it's messy. It never works the first time. You have to check a little bit of queries. It's really hard to make queries in Azure Monitor.

I have been using Azure Monitor for five years.

We never had issues with the solution's stability. I rate Azure Monitor a nine out of ten for stability.

I rate Azure Monitor a nine out of ten for scalability. It's a cloud service, and we don't have any issues with it.

Azure Monitor's technical support overall is not perfect.

Neutral

We have seen a return on investment with Azure Monitor because it's a tool that's out of the box in the cloud.

Azure Monitor's pricing is tied to the services. The Azure Insight is a little bit expensive. It's a little expensive if you want to avail all the features.

I am using the on-cloud version of Azure Monitor.

If they are using the cloud, users can use Azure Monitor as the first tool because it already has integration with all the services. However, the query language that I use is really complex. So if users haven't built queries before, they will have several issues with it.

Even for technical people, they will have issues if they don't have experience using a query language. So if they are using Azure, they should use Azure Monitor initially. Later, they can improve the monitoring environment by applying some other tools.

Overall, I rate Azure Monitor a seven out of ten.