Azure Monitor Reviews

We haven't yet implemented it in my current company. It's going to be for our clients. We're an MSP, and we'll be implementing it for some of our clients. The only thing that we're thinking about is using it for performance monitoring and storage monitoring. Its use case is most likely going to be to manage data.

We're building out a cloud plan. We're trying to pick our own. We're trying to move certain companies into the cloud. There is a debate going on about taking the Microsoft route rather than the AWS route or the Google route. If we're going to go with Azure, we would need a monitoring tool.

The only things for which our company might be using it are storage monitoring and performance monitoring. Nothing else.

In the last company where I worked about a year ago, it looked very simple. 

Its interface has room for improvement. Some of the options or some of the ways to navigate could be improved, but that's a general thing. All companies are always modifying the user interface because there's a better way to move things around or a better way to put things so that people can see the product features that they didn't know existed. For me, that's probably the biggest thing.

It's a little lacking in features. There are some things that they could do to improve it, but it's not that big of a deal for me. There's obviously competition that does a lot more, but for what we're going to be using it for, it's perfectly fine. The biggest one is probably just the user interface. There could be more advanced logging at the database level. They can also improve their query builder to allow you to search for things better, but I last used it about a year ago. They might have already changed a ton of things in the newer versions.

I've used this solution for two years. I last used it in my previous company about a year ago.

It was pretty straightforward. 

Based on my experience with Azure Monitor about a year ago, I'd rate it a seven out of ten. There are better tools with better interfaces, deeper integration into applications, and things like that, but they could have improved it, and it could be a lot more comfortable now than when I was using it.

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.

I use Monitor for up-down (up time / down time) monitoring and tracking performance events within Azure. Essentially, I use it for log analytic searches, backend searches, and also to provide insights into Azure Monitor.

I find that the new dynamic alerting is a pretty good feature now. It bought the product up to date. Response times for alerts are much better than they were. Also running event searches within Azure Monitor. They're quite handy features and I find them all valuable.

I'm quite involved in the automation of dynamic alerts so I really can provide some insight into how that can be improved. They did have an alerts feature before and it was quite well automated, but since they've gone to a dynamic model and did a few updates, it broke a few things. Some commands that were used before no longer work. But some things that could be improved are:

• Feedback should really be feeding back to MSFC (Windows Server Failover Cluster). 
• Make it so you can actually create more dynamic alerts on the fly. 
• Add capabilities to export templates dynamically. 
• Integrate better with Terraform — which everybody seems to be using these days. The integration with Terraform is broken on the Terraform side as well so it's not working as well as it should be from either point.

The stability of the product is okay. We've got to do some further testing with alerting. It is something we are at the point of using now with our customers. A client was previously getting flooded with alerts but not when we were able to suppress alerts in the right way. So, I think it's pretty stable compared to how it was. There is still more room for improvement.

I think the scalability is pretty good and you can plug-and-play pretty well. I'm not sure how well the product talks to other third-party tools, but overall the scalability is good. I don't think they are going to scrap the current model but they've got a lot of things that you can embed now with service help metrics. I think it is a pretty good bonus. There is a new upscale function as well, so scalability is pretty good.

The technical support is pretty good. They have been getting better. A lot of the call center operations are offshore these days, but that situation has been getting better as well. I would say there is an improvement in technical support in response time to tickets. They usually get to things within four to eight hours. Even if the technicians say there is going to be a 24-hour response — like a class C ticket — it still goes through.

The product is in the portal, so you don't really need to set it up. When you get your subscription it is all built-in. If you're setting up customized resources and alerting, then you need to set up the action groups and some other things. For example, I put automation on group creation which sets the alerts and additional parameters. It isn't necessary but it is a good option to take advantage of. The only thing that gets in the way during setup is the integration. I think the setup is getting better and easier than it was.

I implemented the product myself with customizations and building it out for our needs.

I have been using this product almost since it was first released. It changed in the last two or three years to be officially launched. I think the initial release of Monitor came out about four years ago and has improved a bit. So on a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Azure Monitor further up there than I would have before. It is eight now. It is really production-ready. I'm not going to give it 10 out of 10 cause nothing's ever that good but I'll give it an 8.5 out of 10.

To get closer to being a ten they would need automation of alerting. What I mean by this is adding a feature where you drag-and-drop what you want and then you can click and it exports the template. That would be ideal. I think there is actually a way to do that template export, but there isn't a dedicated export function. You can do that without a dedicated function when you deploy, but you can't do that with a visual monitor at the moment. 

In any case, I would definitely recommend the product for Azure users because it is seamlessly integrated into the platform.

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 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.

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.

We primarily use the solution as a Server monitoring service.

The solution can be scaled.

The solution is quite stable.

Overall, we're not too enthusiastic about the solution.

The solution is administration heavy, and very cumbersome. Using it is a lot of work on the admin side. It doesn't do things out of the box the way other products do. 

The new  data ingest pricing model is wrong. They should scrap that all together. It should be a flat rate per year. As of right now, it fluctuates month to month, so it's hard to really know how much you will be charged.

The solution needs a lot of work. It needs out of the box monitoring, real-time monitoring, and better network mapping.  There are many features that are lacking.

The process of implementation needs to be easier. 

The problem is the solution only does Azure. It can't monitor any other SAAS products. That's a very limiting design flaw.

We've been dealing with the solution for three years at this point.

The stability is okay. I just think it doesn't have the same agility as its competitors like ExtraHop, New Relic, or Dynatrace. 

It's nowhere near as good as those products.

The scalability of the solution is pretty good. A company has the capabilities of expanding if they need to.

I personally have never contacted technical support. However, we haven't had any issues. We haven't really used the solution in any great detail and therefore haven't run into many issues simply due to it being complicated to administer its features. 

The solution is currently replacing SCOM, and SCOM is a very admin heavy product. Azure Monitor seems to require a lot of admin as well.

Neither are out-of-the-box solutions. Both require a lot of work.

I didn't participate in implementing the solution, so I can't personally evaluate how the process went. I'm not sure if it's complex or straightforward. However, one of my technicians handles the process, and it's my understanding that it's very complicated to set up.

In House

None, it cost more to run than any benefits gained

Due to the fact that the pricing has changed to a date ingest model, it can get very expensive. The costing can fluctuate quite a bit month to month.  There isn't a way to really say this costs so many dollars a month.

No unfortunately as this product came with our bulk licensing agreement.

We're just a Microsoft customer. We don't have any special relationship with the company.

We use a mixture of hybrid, public, and private cloud in terms of deployment models.

The product is not as good as a lot of market-leading products.

We haven't used the solution a great deal yet. We've only just scratched the surface. because we don't have the time to spend on it.

I'd rate the solution four our of ten.

I wouldn't recommend the solution at all. I would direct other companies to go to either ExtraHop or New Relic. I would go to Dynatrace as well if I had the choice. 

Microsoft Azure Monitor would be one of the last things on my list to recommend to others.