CloudMonix monitors a wide range of data, offering a comprehensive overview of both Azure and standalone resources. Much of the information tracked by CloudMonix is not available in Azure Portal. A comprehensive list of differences by each resource is outlined later in this article.

In addition to monitoring, CloudMonix offers a number of unique automation features designed to provide users with ability to recover their cloud apps and services from production issues.  When CloudMonix detects an issue, it can execute automated server reboots, run Powershell scripts, recycle IIS app pools, restart WebApps, start Azure Automation runbooks, etc. These operations are easily configured with a few clicks of a button.

Furthermore, CloudMonix offers an auto-scaling engine that allows for sophisticated auto-scaling conditions of Cloud Services, SQL Azure, WebApps, SQL Data Warehouses, etc. These capabilities are far superior to what is offered in the Azure Portal.

Metrics from various resources can be correlated, aggregated and computed to define advanced conditions for alerts, automation and auto-scaling rules. Contrary to Azure Portal, any signal from the monitored environment can be used in alerts, auto-scaling and self-healing automation.

In addition to real-time self-updating dashboards, CloudMonix allows users to browse their dashboards back in time to when issues occurred for investigation into Root Cause Analysis (RCA).  Historical reports provide access to captured data for up to one (1) year.  Customers can also ingest data collected by CloudMonix into their own SQL database for custom reporting and analysis.

historical dashboard

To ease initial monitoring setup, the product comes built-in with useful metrics and alerts out of the gate. Furthermore, to save on configuration time, monitoring profiles can easily be saved, shared and applied to other resources via “resource templates” functionality.

CloudMonix seamlessly integrates with other popular third party applications, such as PagerDuty, Autotask, Slack, Zendesk, Nagios, Zabbix, and more. Full list of supported integrations is provided later in this article.  SSO is supported for customers running Azure AD/ADFS/Office365/Google Apps/etc.

There are a number of features that target Managed Service Providers and other consulting organizations. MSPs can easily manage multiple customers (CSP’s are supported).  MSPs can choose to keep their customers in separate CloudMonix sub-accounts and even invite their customers into these sub-accounts.  White-labeling is supported.

CloudMonix Accounts

DevOps can automate monitoring setup of their continuously deployed environments by using CloudMonix REST API.  Keeping Production Azure resources or subscriptions separate from DEV/QA services is supported.

Benefits of using CloudMonix for Azure resources

Here are just some of the important differences where CloudMonix tracks more data or provides automation and auto-scaling capabilities that far exceed the default native Azure offering:

Resource Type CloudMonix Benefits (features that Azure portal doesn’t have)

Azure Windows VMs

 Azure VM Logo

  • Track and alert on
    • any Windows Performance Counters including custom ones from third party systems
    • Windows Event Logs
    • Windows processes, Services, and Scheduled Tasks
  • Automatically restart failed local Windows Services
  • Automatically shut down and start VMs according to a schedule
  • Auto-resize VMs according to a schedule or custom criteria
  • Monitor Windows Updates

Azure Linux VMs

 Azure VM Logo

  • Track and alert on performance values related to CPU, disk, memory and network utilization
  • Monitor and alert on Linux SysLogs
  • Auto-resize VMs according to a schedule or custom criteria
  • Automatically shut down and start VMs according to a schedule
Azure Cloud Services

Azure Cloud Services - Worker role Icon Azure Cloud Services - Web role Icon

  • Track and alert on
    • any Windows Performance Counters including custom ones from third party systems
    • Windows Event Logs
  • Automatically reboot failing (e.g. memory-leaking) instances
  • Sequentially reboot of all instances in a Role once per day
  • Auto-scale instances based on any metrics, such as the actual demand (requests/sec, CPU, Memory, etc), ASB/Storage queue depths or according to a schedule
Azure WebApps

Azure WebApp - WebJobs Icon

  • Monitor Webjobs (continuous or triggered)
  • Automatically restart Websites or Webjobs if they crash
  • Auto-scale Websites based on any metrics, such as the actual demand (requests/sec, CPU, Memory, etc), ASB/Storage queue depths or according to a schedule
  • Track and alert on basic WebApp metrics

Azure Service Bus

Azure Service Bus Icon

  • Alert when messages have been dead-lettered in either queues or topic/subscriptions
  • Alert when queues are not being depleted in a timely manner
  • Auto-scale compute resources by queue and topic message counts
SQL Azure

Azure SQL Database Icon

  • Alert on connectivity issues
  • Track and alert on
    • sessions and connections
    • blocking (deadlocked) queries
    • performance metrics (DTU, R/W utilization, etc)
    • longest running queries
    • any data retrieved using custom SQL queries
  • Execute custom SQL-based maintenance jobs on a schedule
  • Auto-scale database tiers based on any metrics in the environment, such as DTU, number of connections, etc.

Azure  Storage

(Queues, Blob, File, Table)

Azure Storage Icon

  • Alert when storage queues are not depleting or are filling up
  • Monitor the availability by performing actual R/W tests against storage
  • Track and alert on
    • resource specific metrics like queue lengths for Storage Queues
    • slow or failed requests
    • any Storage Analytic metrics (errors, requests, etc)
    • storage outages
Azure Redis Cache

Azure Cache including Redis Icon

  • Monitor availability by performing actual R/W tests
  • Track and alert on
    • cache hit rate
    • memory utilization
    • high load
    • client connections
    • any data loaded thru custom Lua scripts
Azure Backups Vault
Azure Backup - Recovery Vault Icon
  • Track and alert on
    • failed or non-started backup jobs
    • unhealthy storage containers

Azure Virtual Network Gateways

Azure VPN Gateway Icon

  • Track and alert on
    • connectivity issues
    • ingress and egress by connection or across gateway

Azure SQL Data Warehouse

Azure Data Warehouse Icon

  • Automatically Pause/Resume to save on costs
  • Auto-scale database tiers based on any metrics in the environment, such as DWU, number of connections, etc.
  • Track and alert on
    • connectivity issues
    • active loads
    • idle sessions
    • any data retrieved using custom SQL queries
    • longest running queries
Azure Data Factories

Azure Data Factory Icon

  • Monitor Azure Data Factory activities, pipelines and gateways
  • Alert on failed activities
Azure Stream Analytics Jobs

Azure Stream Analytics Icon

  • Monitor jobs, their inputs/outputs and statuses
  • Alert on failed jobs, conversion errors and high utilization
  • Monitor Azure management operations
Azure Event Hubs

Azure Event Hubs Icon

  • Track and alert on incoming and outgoing rates of events
  • Ensure events are flowing thru the Hub and alert when they get stuck
Azure DocumentDb Collection

Azure DocumentDB Icon

  • Monitor availability by performing actual R/W tests against DocumentDb collections
  • Track and alert on
    • RU’s, requests and utilization
    • outages
    • high utilization
    • any data retrieved using custom SQL-like scripts
  • Monitor Azure management operations
Azure Media Services

Azure Media Services Icon

  • Track and alert on
    • jobs statuses and failures
    • assets
  • Monitor endpoints and channels health
  • Monitor Azure management operations
Azure Automation

Azure Automation Icon

  • Execute Runbooks as a reaction to custom production conditions anywhere in the environment (ie: failovers, custom restarts, etc)
  • Monitor scheduled Runbooks for failures
Azure Scheduler Job Collection

Azure Scheduler Icon

  • Track and alert on failed jobs

Benefits of using CloudMonix for standalone resources

In addition to monitoring Azure resources, CloudMonix supports the following resources non-Azure resources:

Resource Type CloudMonix Benefits
Standalone Windows Server

Windows Server Icon

  • Track and alert on
    • any Windows Performance Counters including custom ones or from third party systems
    • Windows Event Logs
    • Windows processes, Services, and Scheduled Tasks
  • Automatically restart failed Windows Services
  • Automatically reboot the server according to a schedule
Standalone SQL Server

SQL Server Icon

  • Track and alert on
    • connectivity issues
    • sessions and user connections
    • blocking queries
    • any data retrieved using custom SQL queries
  • Identify longest running queries
  • Execute custom SQL-based maintenance jobs on a schedule

URL/website

Website Icon

  • Track and alert on
    • outages
    • long response times
    • SSL certificate expiration
  • Monitor for specific text in the resulting HTML
  • Support for basic auth, custom certificates and custom headers
Other Endpoints: Socket,

API (JSON/XML)

Endpoints Icon

  • Track and alert on
    • outages
    • long response times
    • any custom data exposed via JSON/XML endpoint as CloudMonix metrics
  • Support for basic auth, custom certificates and custom headers
Redis Cache

Redis Icon

  • Monitor the actual availability using R/W tests
  • Track alert on
    • cache hit rate
    • memory utilization
    • high load
    • too many client connections
    • any data retrieved using custom Lua scripts

Oracle Database

Oracle Icon

  • Alert on connectivity issues
  • Track and alert on
    • sessions and connections
    • blocking (deadlocked) queries
    • performance metrics (cache misses, response time, etc)
    • longest running queries
    • any data retrieved using custom SQL queries
  • Execute custom SQL-based maintenance jobs on a schedule
MySQL Database

MySQL Icon

  • Alert on connectivity issues
  • Track and alert on
    • sessions and connections
    • blocking (deadlocked) queries
    • performance metrics (response time, etc)
    • longest running queries
    • any data retrieved using custom SQL queries
  • Execute custom SQL-based maintenance jobs on a schedule

Integrations with 3-rd party applications

CloudMonix provides integrations for 3rd party applications listed below. Integrations can be set up in just a few minutes.

Application  Details
CloudMonix can open a new Autotask ticket when an alert is triggered, and automatically close it when alert is resolved.
Freshdesk LogoFreshservice Logo CloudMonix can open a new Freshdesk and Freshservice ticket when an alert is triggered, and automatically close it when alert is resolved.
HipChat Logo CloudMonix can post a notification message in a specified HipChat room when an alert is triggered and when it is resolved.
Logentries Logo CloudMonix can add a new log entry in Logentries a new log entry when an alert is triggered and when it is resolved.
Loggly Logo CloudMonix can add a new log entry in Loggly a new log entry when an alert is triggered and when it is resolved.
Nagios Logo During every monitoring cycle,  host status and metrics can be synchronized to Nagios XI.
Pagerduty Logo CloudMonix can raise a new PagerDuty incident when an alert is triggered, and automatically resolve it when alert is resolved.
CloudMonix can post a notification message in a specified Slack channel when an alert is triggered and when it is resolved.
SQL Server Logo

SQL Azure Logo

During every monitoring cycle, CloudMonix will push collected data into SQL Azure/SQL Server database of customers’ choice.
CloudMonix can send a notification message as SMS using Twilio when an alert is triggered and when it is resolved.
Webhooks Logo Any 3rd party product that is not explicitly covered in this list can still be integrated with by creating custom XML/JSON webhooks. CloudMonix can push notifications when an alert is triggered and when it is resolved.
Zabbix Logo During every monitoring cycle, host status and metrics can be synchronized to Zabbix.
Zapier Logo CloudMonix can push a notification message to specified Zap in Zapier when an alert is triggered and when it is resolved.
Zendesk Logo CloudMonix can open a new Zendesk ticket when an alert is triggered, and automatically close it when alert is resolved.

Conclusion

Trying CloudMonix is simple and hassle free.  Typical setup takes 3-5 minutes and CloudMonix auto-detects everything it can monitor within user’s Azure subscription automatically.  Sign up and see for yourself!