Azure Monitor Reviews

The solution is included in all of our solutions created with ISO. We always include Azure Monitor as the primary service to review the infrastructure state for our customers.

The most valuable feature is the universality of their functionalities in all Azure services, including, software solutions.

I would like more transparency when we use the solution with another environment, like on-premises, or on another cloud environment, like AWS or GCP.

What I would like to see in the next release is not directly related to the solution, but it depends on Azure cost management. Maybe if we had the opportunity to monitor the cost of Azure and another cloud in one environment, and maybe integrate that with Azure Monitor, that would be incredible and amazing for any IT company to offer that to our customers.

I have been using the solution for almost four years.

The licensing is a monthly fee.

I give this solution a nine out of ten.

We use Azure Monitor as our alert system. We also use it for other types of measurement.

Currently, we use Power BI for our data visualization, and Azure Monitor is a very good fit with those cases. Another thing I like about the solution is that we can easily export the data, and the tool seamlessly works together with Datadog, though in terms of visualization in Azure Monitor, it's not as beautiful. It also doesn't have as many features as Power Bi, and this is why we were comparing it with Datadog.

We use Power BI because it has many features, so that's the main part we consider when selecting which tool to use. As for Datadog, people think of it as an application performance monitoring tool, rather than a data exporting tool, so they will still use Azure Monitor for exporting data. In some cases when the data analyst team needs some type of data, we can set that up for them on Azure Monitor, then consider using Datadog as a platform monitor.

Visualization in Azure Monitor needs improvement. Adding more features to it would also make the solution better.

My experience with Azure Monitor is six months.

Azure Monitor is a stable tool.

Azure Monitor is scalable, but the only downside to it is that it's not an out-of-the-box (OOTB) solution, so we cannot scale it to something outside of Azure ServiceNow. Currently, we use ServiceNow as a ticketing system, then use Datadog as the incident and alert system to trigger a ticket in ServiceNow, which we cannot do in Azure Monitor.

Azure Monitor is a low-priced solution.

We evaluated Datadog.

I was comparing Datadog and Azure Monitor. We had a POC for Datadog and we were trying to test it with the trial account for our current data solution in Azure, so we tried to measure the differences between the two solutions.

Now we use Azure Monitor for our alerts and other measurements, but not as an application performance monitoring tool, so we're considering Datadog for that purpose. They made the final decision to use Datadog for application performance monitoring.

We are not in the setup phase for Azure Monitor yet, because we're still doing a POC for visibility, so we still have no idea on whether it'll be complex or straightforward to set up the tool.

As we are very small, we have not had the chance to contact tech support for this solution, plus we have a dedicated team from Microsoft who handles our questions and issues. Currently, we don't have an issue on Azure Monitor, but have raised issues about other Microsoft solutions, and the Microsoft dedicated team have been very supportive.

My advice to others looking into implementing Azure Monitor is that if they're working on small-scale projects and their projects fit Azure, then Azure Monitor will be the best solution for them, particularly because it is low-priced. The tool is also good when building a solution, e.g. they won't need to explore outside of it, but if they're building a multi-cloud solution, and they have a mix of on-premises and cloud, my suggestion is for them to use Datadog.

I will rate Azure Monitor a seven out of ten, because this solution has two things that we don't like, e.g. it doesn't tell you what and how it happened. It just says: "Hey, that happened", and "Go and check it". This is the reason why I don't recommend Azure Monitor, e.g. it's not a very informative tool, so we don't use it for our root cause investigation.

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.

We have multiple customer internet-facing applications, so we require granular control of each of the data flows. That is something this product helps with.

The ease of use and direct integration with various products have been very useful aspects of the solution that our organization has taken advantage of.

It's easy to configure and easy to integrate with other products.

The initial setup is simple.

Technical support is helpful.

The solution is very stable. 

It can scale.

The solution needs better monitoring. It requires better log controls.

At this point in time, I don't expect them to add many other features. 

I've been using the solution for six months. 

The solution is quite stable. It's reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. We haven't had any performance issues. I'd rate the level of stability ten out of ten. 

The solution is auto-scalable. I'd rate its ability to expand ten out of ten. It's a SaaS solution and does not require manual scaling. 

Our user base is about ten individuals. We don't have any more than that on it right now. We do not require it to expand too much in the future. 

Technical support has been great. They are helpful and responsive. 

Positive

I found the initial setup process to be straightforward. 

I'd rate the ease of deployment ten out of ten. The deployment itself was fast and took maybe ten to 15 minutes. 

Just two people were involved in the deployment process. They were regular architects or technical individuals who were part of the deployment.

ONce deployed, the solution itself does not require maintenance. 

We handled the deployment in-house. We did not need any help from outside integrators or consultants. 

I'm not involved in licensing aspects.

That said, my understanding is it is affordable. 

We have a partnership with Microsoft. 

We are always on the latest version of the solution as it is on the cloud. 

I'd advise others it was quite affordable and easy to configure. 

I would rate the solution nine out of ten. 

Azure Monitor helps monitor resources to get alerts on the usage or incident's generation. One can also use it to log the events in the event's hub or analyze them through Azure Log Analytics workspace and SIEM tools available to analyze your resource utilization.

The logs, analytics, alerts, and Azure Log Analytics workspace are valuable features in Azure Monitor.

Improvement is a continuous process, and Azure Monitor should keep improving the solution per the evolving trend and technologies. The scalability could be improved as there are some limitations.

I have been using the solution for more than four years.

It is a stable solution. I rate its stability a nine out of ten.

It is a scalable solution but needs some improvement because of its policies.

Azure Monitor is useful at the enterprise level because it already has many resource monitoring solutions.

I rate its scalability an eight out of ten.

Technical support is good and helpful as the services they provide us are based on the SLA we have with them.

The initial setup is easy. Those who opt for Azure Monitor should use it as per needs. For example, one can use it to monitor resources, administrative operations, or log events. The solution was deployed on the cloud.

My company is okay with the current pricing of the solution.

I recommend the product to those planning to use it. I rate the overall product an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for Application Insights logging, Database logging, etc. We also use it to analyze charts on the dashboard to get an overview of the issues found in the logs. The solution helps us in monitoring, analytics, and logging.

With the solution's help, we can detect database performance issues, like which tables are missing in the indexes on some columns, etc. It helps us monitor timeout in the database, such as performance issues of the queries. If the queries timeout in five minutes, we can analyze the problem with the help of Application Insights. We can detect the problem of a specific step or reason responsible for letting the application fail or crash. For example, if the application crashes during Selenium's end-to-end test on the UI, we can find the reason by going through the logs.

The solution has tons of valuable features.

They should include advanced logging on the database level in the Azure pool. Presently, we are not able to catch the transaction logs. The preview mode is available only for dedicated SQL servers and not for a database pool. They should improve this particular area of the solution. 

They should add a built-in feature for tracing the request and responses. Currently, it does not get measured automatically, and we need to write down the custom solution to check the request and the responses in the logs. They should create a log utility to log the request and send it to the Application Insights in the integration as a custom attribute. 

There should be default parameters and headers, which we can customize. It'll be beneficial because, at present, we only have responses, but not the requests. It is the solution's downside.

We have been using the solution for six years.

I rate the solution's stability as a five for the European region and ten for other regions.

I rate the solution's scalability as a ten.

A part of the setup process was straightforward. At the same time, a part of the process required some guidance because the Azure monitor evolves constantly. Most of the time, the blog post or guidance article on how to set up gets outdated quickly. Sometimes many things don't work as expected or as written in the Microsoft documentation.

If you have a solution built on Microsoft technology, go for Azure Monitor. I rate it as a nine out of ten.

We use this solution for recording the logs and generating dashboards using Azure broad view insights. It is a great solution.

The solution should have cross-connection or cross-communication between tech partners. For example, it should be able to read the logs in the database and GCP environment by enabling a couple of hooks to collect information from cloud vendors to Azure Insights.

We have been using this solution for two years.

It is a stable solution. 

Azure Monitor is scalable, and we have not encountered any issues.

We have used Microsoft support for one or two usages regarding our area integrations. We already have some education with Microsoft Azure, and I believe a couple of engineers from Microsoft work on the technical support.

It is a move-in powerful feature compared to other market-leading tools. It has the capability to not only monitor your applications but also deliver dashboards. We can pinpoint different areas for improvement and it provides the ability to identify precisely what dash metrics are failing. It is introspective on contextual logging and delivers good dashboards. This helps senior management manage, alert, debug and look at operational insights.

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.