Delving into the Azure Dashboards

Delving into the Azure Dashboards

Azure Dashboards are an essential tool for monitoring and visualizing the performance, health, and status of your resources and services in Azure. They provide customizable, real-time visual representations of key metrics and logs related to your Azure resources, helping you keep track of your applications, infrastructure, security, and operational health.

This guide will explore Azure Dashboards, their use cases, how to create and configure them, and how to integrate them with other Azure monitoring tools such as Azure Monitor, Azure Application Insights, and Azure Log Analytics.

1. What Are Azure Dashboards?

Azure Dashboards allow you to visualize and monitor the health, performance, and activity of your Azure resources.

These dashboards provide a consolidated view of critical information that can be used to:

1. Monitor resource health: Track CPU usage, memory consumption, and other key performance indicators.

2. View metrics and logs: Display metrics, logs, and alerts from Azure Monitor, Application Insights, and Log Analytics.

3. Troubleshoot issues: Quickly identify issues in your environment using real-time data visualizations.

4. Collaborate with teams: Share dashboards with stakeholders or teams for collaborative monitoring and decision-making.

2. Key Features of Azure Dashboards

Azure Dashboards offer several features that make them a powerful monitoring tool for cloud-based applications and resources:

1. Customizable Views:

You can create fully customizable dashboards that display exactly the data you need, whether it’s CPU usage, memory metrics, application performance, or security logs.

2. Widgets:

Dashboards in Azure are composed of various widgets, which can be used to represent different data types.

Examples of widgets include:

• Charts (line, bar, pie)

• Tables

• Metrics

• Text boxes for annotations

• Maps for geographic resource visualization

• Logs and Alerts

3. Integration with Azure Services:

Azure Dashboards can be integrated with services like Azure Monitor, Azure Application Insights, Log Analytics, and Azure Security Center to show real-time metrics and logs for all your services and resources.

4. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC):

You can control access to dashboards using Azure’s RBAC. This ensures that only authorized users can view or modify specific dashboards.

5. Multiple Dashboard Sharing:

You can share dashboards with other users or groups, making them valuable for cross-team collaboration.

6. Interactive Filters:

Dashboards support filters and parameters that allow users to drill down into specific metrics, regions, or resource types.

3. Use Cases for Azure Dashboards

1. Application Monitoring:

Visualize and track metrics like response times, availability, throughput, and error rates for applications running on Azure App Services or Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

2. Infrastructure Health Monitoring:

Track the health and performance of Azure Virtual Machines (VMs), App Services, Databases, and other infrastructure components. Monitor metrics like CPU usage, disk I/O, and network traffic.

3. Security Monitoring:

Use dashboards to monitor security alerts, vulnerability findings, and threat intelligence from Azure Security Center and Microsoft Defender for cloud services.

4. Cost and Usage Management:

Create dashboards to track resource usage and spending, helping to optimize cloud costs. This can include Azure Cost Management and Azure Billing insights.

5. DevOps Monitoring:

Monitor build and release pipelines, CI/CD activities, and integration with Azure DevOps. This can also include tracking the status of deployments and test coverage.

4. How to Create and Configure Azure Dashboards

Creating and configuring Azure Dashboards is straightforward, and it can be done from the Azure Portal. Follow these steps:

Step 1: Access the Dashboard in Azure Portal

• Sign in to the Azure Portal.

• In the left-hand menu, click on "Dashboard".

Step 2: Create a New Dashboard

• In the Dashboard section, click on "+ New Dashboard" to create a new dashboard.

• Name your dashboard and click on Create.

Step 3: Add and Configure Widgets

• After creating a dashboard, you will be directed to the blank dashboard canvas where you can add various widgets.

• Click on the “+ Add a resource” button to add widgets such as:

  • Charts

  • Tables

  • Metrics

  • Logs

  • Azure Resource Graph queries

• For example, to add a metrics chart:

  • Click on “Add Metrics Chart”.

  • Select the resource (e.g., Virtual Machine, SQL Database, App Service).

  • Choose the metric you want to track (e.g., CPU Utilization, Memory Usage).

  • Configure the widget’s size, display settings, and other options.

You can also add log queries to pull data from Azure Log Analytics or use Azure Monitor to display metrics.

Step 4: Arrange and Customize the Dashboard

• Resize widgets: You can resize the widgets to create a custom layout that fits your needs.

• Reposition widgets: Drag and drop widgets into a grid layout that suits your display.

• Customize appearance: Each widget has configuration options, including color, labels, and thresholds.

Step 5: Save the Dashboard

Once you have added and arranged all the necessary widgets, click "Save" at the top to save the dashboard.

5. Configuring and Customizing Charts

Charts are one of the most useful widgets for visualizing data on an Azure Dashboard. You can configure them to track performance metrics, resource utilization, and more.

Adding a Metrics Chart:

1. Select Metrics: Click “Add a metric chart” to display metrics such as CPU, memory, or request count for your resources.

2. Choose Metrics: Select the specific metric (e.g., CPU Usage (%), Disk I/O), resource (e.g., VM, storage account), and time window (e.g., last 24 hours, last week).

3. Apply Filters: You can apply filters based on:

• Resource type

• Location

• Time range

• Metric aggregation (e.g., average, sum, maximum)

4. Adjust Visualization: Choose the type of visualization (e.g., line chart, bar chart, pie chart) to best display the data.

5. Thresholds and Alerts: Set thresholds for the metrics (e.g., alert if CPU usage is above 80%).

Example: CPU Usage Metric for Azure VM

To monitor CPU usage for a Virtual Machine (VM):

1. Select the VM resource.

2. Choose the CPU Usage metric.

3. Select the desired time range (e.g., Last 24 hours).

4. Adjust the aggregation method (e.g., Average).

5. Choose a visualization (e.g., line chart).

Configuring Logs (Using Log Analytics Queries)

1. Add a Log Analytics query widget to your dashboard.

2. Write or paste a query from Log Analytics to retrieve log data (e.g., tracking failed logins or errors). Example:

xxxxxxxxxx
3
1
Event
2
| where EventLevelName == "Error"
3
| summarize count() by bin(TimeGenerated, 1h), Computer`

3. Visualize the log data in a chart, table, or other suitable format.

6. Sharing and Access Control for Dashboards

Azure provides Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to manage who can view or edit dashboards.

Steps to Share a Dashboard:

• After creating your dashboard, click on the "Share" button at the top.

• You can share it with specific users, groups, or Azure Active Directory (AAD) roles.

• Assign the necessary permissions:

  • Reader: View the dashboard.

  • Contributor: Edit the dashboard.

  • Owner: Full control, including managing permissions.

Considerations:

1. Permissions: Ensure that only authorized users have edit or view access to the dashboard.

2. Sharing with Teams: Use Azure Active Directory groups to simplify dashboard sharing across teams.

7. Integrating Azure Dashboards with Other Azure Services

Azure Dashboards integrate seamlessly with a wide range of Azure monitoring services, including:

1. Azure Monitor: Use Azure Monitor metrics and logs to track and visualize resource performance.

2. Azure Application Insights: Use Application Insights to track application performance metrics, such as response times and error rates.

3. Azure Log Analytics: Integrate queries from Log Analytics workspaces to analyze logs and events, and visualize them in your dashboards.

4. Azure Security Center: Track security alerts and vulnerability findings using Azure Security Center metrics.

5. Azure Cost Management: Add cost metrics to your dashboards to monitor resource usage and spending.

8. Best Practices for Azure Dashboards

1. Focus on Key Metrics: Keep your dashboards simple and focused on key metrics that provide actionable insights. Avoid clutter by selecting the most relevant metrics and data.

2. Use Multiple Dashboards: Create different dashboards for different audiences (e.g., one for developers, one for operations teams, one for management).

3. Leverage RBAC: Control who can view or edit dashboards based on team roles, ensuring that the right people have access to the right information.

4. Automate Alerts: Integrate Azure Monitor Alerts into your dashboards so that critical thresholds trigger notifications.

5. Utilize Custom Views: Customize the layout and filter data by region, resource group, or any other relevant filters to improve the effectiveness of the dashboard.

Summary

Azure Dashboards are an essential tool for effectively monitoring and managing your Azure resources. By allowing you to visualize key metrics and logs in real-time, dashboards enable you to make informed decisions, identify issues quickly, and improve operational efficiency. With Azure’s flexible and customizable dashboard capabilities, you can design views that are tailored to your team’s needs, integrate data from multiple services, and collaborate on performance and health insights.