Azure Management Tools: What do you need in your toolbox for success?

Steve Rastall (Founder & CEO) 06-Jun-2023 15:25:39

Cloud Management

As an Azure administrator, there are too many moving parts for you to manage things manually. With this in mind, what sort of automation tools do you need to do your job effectively?

In this blog post, we'll explore four categories of cloud management tools:

Monitoring
Application monitoring
Orchestration and automation
Security

We will then discuss how CloudOps cloud management platform can integrate them all into a turnkey platform, saving you the time and effort involved in setting up and learning those systems.

Monitoring:

Monitoring your Azure resources is vital for proactive issue detection and efficient resource utilization. One powerful open-source monitoring tool to consider is Zabbix.

Zabbix provides comprehensive monitoring capabilities, enabling you to monitor the health and performance of your Azure infrastructure, network devices, and applications. With its robust alerting system, you can stay ahead of potential problems and take corrective actions promptly.

Application Monitoring:

In addition to infrastructure monitoring, monitoring the performance and availability of your applications is essential. Prometheus is a leading open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit and it allows you to detect issues and record metrics about your custom applications.

Prometheus includes hundreds of plugins for a wide range of software, and you may integrate it into your bespoke apps using preset toolkits for common application types.

Orchestration and Automation:

As your Azure environment grows, managing and orchestrating resources manually becomes increasingly challenging. That's where orchestration and automation tools come in. SaltStack is a robust infrastructure automation and configuration management tool that can simplify and streamline your operations. With SaltStack, you can automate deployment, configuration, and management tasks across your Azure infrastructure, reducing human errors and ensuring consistency.

Security:

Penetration testing tools, such as those offered by Pentest Tools, can assist you in identifying vulnerabilities in your Azure deployments that you may not be aware of until it is too late. You can proactively mitigate risks and safeguard your Azure resources from potential threats by conducting frequent security assessments and penetration testing.

How do I implement a set of Azure Management Tools?

While each of these tools plays a critical role in Azure management, integrating them individually can be time-consuming and complex. That's where CloudOps our cloud management platform comes into play. CloudOps offers a turnkey system that seamlessly integrates these tools and other industry-leading open-source technologies.

With CloudOps, you don't have to carry out separate projects for each tool. Instead, you get a unified cloud management platform that provides a comprehensive suite of Azure management capabilities, from monitoring and application performance management to orchestration, automation, and security.

By adopting CloudOps, you can leverage the power of these essential tools while benefiting from centralised management, streamlined workflows, and simplified operations. The platform enables you to monitor your Azure resources, gain visibility into application performance, automate infrastructure management, and fortify your security posture—all from a single, user-friendly interface.

In conclusion, success in managing your Azure environment requires the right set of tools. Monitoring, application monitoring, orchestration and automation, and security are the key pillars that support efficient operations.

CloudOps cloud management platform integrates these technologies and other industry-leading open-source tools into a turnkey system. By embracing CloudOps, you can achieve operational excellence, save valuable time, and focus on what matters most—innovating and growing your business in the cloud.

Take a free test drive of CloudOps and see how it can help you manage the cloud.

Or get in touch and speak to an AWS or Azure expert today.