INTRODUCTION – Monitoring & Managing in Microsoft Azure
This module involves studying monitoring and management tools and services from Microsoft Azure. This will extensively cover the tools, and then learn to determine the best resources to tackle various business and technical problems. This will give the user insight into the decision-making process relating to the efficiency and relevance of the process to the organizational goals.
Learning Outcomes
- Finds the right Azure management tool to use for some specific technical needs and problems.
- Identifies a specific cloud monitoring service one would use to solve business problems.
KNOWLEDGE CHECK 1
1. Which of Azure’s three primary monitoring offerings are most useful for collecting, analyzing, visualizing, and possibly taking actions based on the collected data from your entire Azure and on-premises environment?
- Azure Advisor
- Azure Monitor (CORRECT)
- Azure Service Health
Correct: Azure Monitor is a complete platform that collects, analyzes, and visualizes all metric and log data from your Azure and on-premise environments. It is the final word on how to gain insight and take action based on those metrics to improve performance and increase reliability.
2. Which of Azure’s three primary monitoring offerings are most useful for providing a personalized view of the health of the Azure services, regions, and resources?
- Azure Advisor
- Azure Service Health (CORRECT)
- Azure Monitor
Correct: Azure Service Health provides a personalized view of the operational health of Azure services, regions, and resources. It lets you keep track of issues that may be affecting your environment.
3. You need to optimize your cloud services for reliability, security, performance, costs, and operations based on expert best practices. Which Azure monitoring tool would you recommend to best satisfy this requirement?
- Azure Advisor (CORRECT)
- Azure Monitor
- Azure Service Health
Correct: Azure Advisor will evaluate your resources in Azure and provide personal recommendations for improving reliability, security, performance, operational excellence, and cost efficiency.
4. You have been tasked with creating alerts that will send notifications to your department when Azure outages occur. Which Azure monitoring tool would you recommend to do this?
- Azure Advisor
- Azure Service Health
- Azure Monitor (CORRECT)
Correct: The Azure Monitor is a service that streamlines the gathering, processing, visualizing, and even the proactive responding to multiple metrics and logs your entire cloud and on-premises environment produces.
5. Your company has recently moved to Azure cloud services. Management are concerned that they may be spending too much and have also highlighted how well their new environment meet security best practices. They would like to analyze their use of the cloud analyzed against industry best practices. Which monitoring tool would you recommend using for this?
- Azure Monitor
- Azure Advisor (CORRECT)
- Azure Service Health
Correct: Azure Adviser gives complete factor based on analysis with respect to Azure resources to generate implementable recommendation and action for improved reliability, security, performance, operational efficiency and cost effectiveness.
KNOWLEDGE CHECK 2
1. Your company has recently moved to Azure cloud services from an on-premises Windows environment and the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) wants to gain insights into how Azure resources are being used and costed. He wants to see the data displayed visually and be able to run reports on an ongoing basis in real-time. Which tool would you recommend using in this scenario?
- Azure Portal (CORRECT)
- Azure CLI
- Azure PowerShell
- ARM Templates
Correct: The Azure portal is the best one for visualizing data and designing reports. It provides various reporting options for quickly discovering answers to questions and understanding them.
2. Your company runs a successful ecommerce business. Typically, at certain times of the year resource usage spikes and it becomes necessary for some staff members to be onsite to monitor the services and deal with any issues these surges may cause. Having moved to Azure, the IT (Information Technology) manager is now hoping to provide a solution that will allow employees to monitor the services remotely.
Which service Azure Cloud services do you think is best to use in this scenario?
- Azure PowerShell
- Azure mobile app (CORRECT)
- Azure CLI
Correct: The Azure mobile application, available on phones or tablets, allows key stakeholders to monitor and connect to the health of the cloud environment from anywhere in the world. An empowering tool for employees, it will keep them engaged with one-off management and administrative tasks away from the office.
3. True or False
Azure PowerShell is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac,
- False
- True (CORRECT)
Correct: Azure PowerShell comes in handy as an excellent tool for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Macintosh. It is also accessible through a web browser using Azure Cloud Shell so that you can manage Azure resources on any platform.
4. True or False
The Azure CLI (Command Line Interface) is an executable program that allows developers, DevOps, and IT professionals to execute commands using bash.
- True (CORRECT)
- False
Correct: The Azure CLI or Command Line Interface is a software program that allows developers, DevOps experts, and IT administrators to execute commands using Bash or any other supported shell. It also provides a simple mechanism for managing Azure resources.
TEST PREP
1. Which of Azure’s monitoring offerings would be most beneficial for evaluating your Azure resources and making recommendations to help you improve reliability, security, and performance?
- Azure Advisor (CORRECT)
- Azure Service Health
- Azure Monitor
Correct: Azure Advisor audits your Azure resources, assesses their performance, and provides personalized recommendations on enhancing reliability, security, and performance for operational excellence and cost optimization.
2. Tailwind Traders have recently migrated to Azure cloud services.
Management wants to ensure that their current implementation is optimized for security and performance in line with industry best practices. Which monitoring tool would you recommend using for this?
- Azure Monitor
- Azure Advisor (CORRECT)
- Azure Service Health
Correct: Azure Advisor monitors your resources and gives personalized advice on how to make them more reliable, more secure, and more efficient and countered operationally available cost-effective resource consumption.
3. Your company runs a successful eCommerce business. The company has multiple offices which require IT staff to travel between them on a regular basis. Having recently migrated to Azure, the IT (Information Technology) manager is now hoping to provide a solution that will allow employees to monitor the services remotely. Which service Azure Cloud services do you think is best to use in this scenario?
- Azure Mobile App (CORRECT)
- Azure PowerShell
- Azure CLI
Correct: The Azure mobile application, which brings functionality to a phone or any tablet, is an avenue that key staff can use to watch the state of the cloud environment, letting them manage it right from anywhere. This allows the employee to keep close contact with work and conduct a one-time activity related to management or administration while out of the office.
4. Your company has recently moved to Azure cloud services from a Linux based on-premises environment. Which tool would you recommend using in this scenario?
- Azure PowerShell
- Azure Portal
- Azure CLI (CORRECT)
- ARM Templates
5. You can use Azure Advisor to analyze the configuration and usage of your deployed resources.
Do you think this can help you to reduce costs?
- Yes (CORRECT)
- No
Correct: It also gives suggestions on how cost-effectively build and maintain a service with the understanding that cost reduction comes as a benefit for Azure users. Suggestions are also available as regards improving performance, reliability, and security.
6. Which of the following services can you use to monitor Azure itself, especially the services and regions you depend on?
- Azure Service Health (CORRECT)
- Azure Monitor
- Azure Advisor
Correct: That is so right! The Azure Service Health gives the current status of the Azure services you are dependent on. It also gives you real-time insight into any issues or outages that might impact your environment.
7. In this scenario, do you think Tailwind Traders needs to analyze its Azure usage for the sake of optimization?
- Yes (CORRECT)
- No
Correct: That’s right! For enhanced analysis of their resources and optimization in improved performance, cost efficiency, security, and reliability, there is an Azure Advisor-like tool by Azure itself. Such tools make it easy to make decisions in maximizing the value of their Azure resources.
8. Do you think you can use Azure Advisor to set up alerts for outages?
- Yes (CORRECT)
- No
Correct: Yes. Azure Advisor evaluates Azure resources and recommends ways to enhance reliability, security, performance, operational excellence, and cost reduction. It is, however, not used for alerting system outages. For subsequent monitoring or alerting on service health or outages, the tool will be Azure Service Health.
9. In this scenario, does Tailwind Traders want to monitor the health of Azure services that affect all customers or the resources deployed on Azure?
- The resources deployed on Azure (CORRECT)
- The health of Azure services
Correct: Absolutely! In other words, the intermittent occurrence of the problem suggests that possibly the e-commerce website codes have a logical fault, or some aspect of the database, perhaps connectivity issues, timeouts, or query performance or something else is causing it. Checking the code of the site, database performance itself, and any related logs would help figure out the actual cause.
10. Do you think you can use Azure Monitor to set up alerts for outages?
- Yes (CORRECT)
- No
Correct: With Azure Monitor, you can make use of this data to react very quickly-around-the-clock to highly critical incidents. You can also create alerts delivered to teams by different channels such as SMS, email, or integration with other services to keep the teams always informed and ready to act.
11. Do you feel it would be important for Tailwind Traders to implement alerts for events such as service outages?
- Yes (CORRECT)
- No
Correct: It is indeed true that tailwind traders should set up alerts for events like when autoscaling is about to deploy a new instance–even so, alerts for outage notifications would be an advantage for most organizations. This would keep the team aware and able to take necessary actions in keeping the performance intact and off-time-free, thereby giving a smooth user experience.
12. Which Azure product do you think you should use in this scenario?
Think about the questions you have just answered using the decision criteria covered to help you make a decision.
- Azure PowerShell (CORRECT)
- Azure Portal
- Azure CLI
Correct: Quite right! Azure PowerShell would definitely be the best bet in this case.
13. Do you think there is an Azure service that lets you remotely perform one-off management, administrative, reporting actions?
- Yes (CORRECT)
- No
14. Do you think you can also use Azure PowerShell or the Azure CLI to deploy infrastructure?
- Yes (CORRECT)
- No
Correct: You are right! Azure PowerShell and the Azure CLI are wonderful tools, but they are not perfect when it comes to deploying resources. For instance, ARM templates, by allowing better efficient, reproducible, as well as scalable, infrastructures deployments, address these limitations.
CONCLUSION – Monitoring & Managing in Microsoft Azure
Concluding this module, it equips you with knowledge to make effective use of Microsoft’s monitoring and management tools in Azure. Understanding these resources helps you understand the best solutions to a wider range of business and technical challenges for the optimization of your organization in performance, reliability, and efficiency.