Dynamics CRM 365 Online has Telemetry to monitor application performance and usage. My understanding is it stores data in Azure by sending via Script and on this Alerts can be set in Azure.
There is a CRM solution Organization Insight which is used for counters like API faults etc. my understanding is that this solution stores data in CRM and not Azure.
Please help if this solution generated data can also be used for settings alerts in azure and if yes, how? Thanks.
Over a period of time different products, SaaS offerings, platform tools, O365 capability were introduced/evolving in and around the Telemetry space. Some are strong in broader horizontal features vs deeper vertical strengths. Upto you to decide based on functionality matrix.
Dynamics CRM using Application Insights - this is just leveraging Azure Application Insights to track Availability, Performance, Usage of our CRM online using AppInsights features. It gives you the power to utilize client side telemetry like user activities/metrics/exceptions/browser, Server side agent for on-premise logs similar to Event viewer/IIS logs, data export, Alerting mechanism & web hooks, custom query, visualizations inside Azure portal resources blade (slice/dice), predictive analysis, etc.
CRM in-house Organization Insights - this is inbuilt telemetry solution from Product team, not yet fully delivered (still with bugs & limited functionality for data consumption itself), but we can expect more features, options & utilities to explore more in future. These are missing today & thats what you are asking. You can download data, call MS to give you the exported data, but still Alerts & monitoring wont fit using only available odata support for charts. This covers a lot of useful Admin stuffs, like natively gives you all plugins, WF, API calls, user interactions, mailbox, storage data, etc within CRM.
Activity logging - this is in preview and MS saying it’s more than what we have in Audit today, gives you extra than CRM audit but less than what Org Insights providing, even less than AppInsights features. But I expect more functionalities here like Alerts, Monitoring, web hooks as this is across O365 platforms & available for Global admins.
Related
I currently have a web app that allows users to create their own website through the platform, like shopify/wordpress/squarespace/wix. I also want to provide an analytics dashboard for these users to keep track of events and page views.
Are there any APIs for this? I took a look at various analytics services (google analytics, mixpanel, Adobe Analytics) but they all seem to be targeted at individual websites.
Or is the best way to keep create a custom solution storing page views and events in our own databases?
Any solution or ideas would be appreciated, thanks! :)
Localytics is a cloud-based analytics and marketing platform. This mobile analytics tool targets every customer from media, retail, travel, business and lifestyle. The retention feature is particularly interesting for users. This feature generates an analysis that pinpoints reasons for business problems, such as drop-offs, low conversion rates and reduced client retention.
There's an awful lot of disjointed documentation on monitoring network/resources in Azure. What I'm looking for is which pieces are needed to get information from VMs, NVA firewalls, azure load balancers, and other network resources and network connectivity into a single pain of glass in Azure. Only concerned about Azure, not on-prem for now.
I've come across azure monitor, log analytics work spaces, event hub, vm extensions, network watcher, insights, etc...but I'm not sure which are required and which are not. One doc leads to the next and I end up with 30 tabs open. I'll also need to be able to push logs to other security devices such as a SIEM.
Does anyone know of a deployment guide that wraps this all up in a more logical fashion? Does anyone have any feedback on which pieces from azure (not 3rd parties) are required at a minimum to accomplish a single pane of glass to view my Azure environment holistically?
General overview of observability in Azure
Likely, the thing you're looking for is Azure Monitor. It's an umbrella term for everything observability related inside Azure.
To store Metrics and Logs you need Log Analytics: it can query data with kusto query language, visualize results, define Alerts on queries.
Alerts is quite a complex beast, as it is spread across the entire cloud. Two types that I use the most:
log-analytics alert (which I mentioned above)
Alerts tab, which is available at every Azure component view. for example, open resource group, and scroll down to Monitoring section
Each component also has a subset of built-in metrics. Likely, you noticed that many azure components on the Overview view display some charts. For example, Azure Storage Account displays Total egress, Total ingress, and other line-charts. When you click on these charts you can customize them. These metrics and charts are free to use.
Microsoft also has all-in-one observability solution for Azure Functions and Web Apps: Application Insights
Dashboards allows to join multiple charts into a single view and share it with others.
If you care about security, Azure proposes Azure Security Center
Deployment/management strategy
I suggest to start with:
Create Log Analytics Workspace, which is the storage for metrics and logs. The azure docs article explains how to design it: how many instances to use, how to rate-limit ingestion (it might be expensive if goes out of control), how to access it and so on.
To get Azure components logs, look for Diagnostic Settings tab at a component page at Azure portal, but not all components has it (sic!). I suggest
sending the most critical data to Log Analytics workspace to store them in a queryable format for 30 days (it's in free tier). This is needed for investigating current issues with your infrastructure
if you might need logs later than 30 days - send them to Storage Account
you mentioned SIEM integration - route required events to Event Hub and then process the stream according to your requirements
So, if you need long-term storage - you need to create Azure Storage Account.
If you need real-time analysis - you need to build a pipeline based on Azure Event Hub.
If you have Azure Functions and Web Apps - add Application Insights. According to my experience, I would suggest starting with a separate instance per each Azure Function resource or Service.
Create Alerts for each component separately. If you do it through UI - open component page at the portal and look for Alerts tab there. If you're automating the process (please do so as soon as possible), do not expect easy trip: I used ARM templates and terraform - in both cases, there are dozens of barely documented features.
Join related components core-metrics into Dashboards and share it with the team. This guide is a good starting point. Note, when you share the dashboard, it's also persisted as an azure resource in the subscription.
New to Azure and would like to know what the difference between Azure API Management and Logic Apps is.
Some pros and cons would be nice. Also what the costing for each of these is like.
Thanks
Seems you want to know about Azure API Management and Azure Logic Apps
Well let me help you what that actually are...
Azure API Management
Azure API Management allows organizations to publish APIs more securely, reliably, and at scale. Use API Management to drive API consumption among internal teams, partners, and developers while benefiting from business and log analytics available in the admin portal
Pros are
Consistent and modern API gateways for existing back-end services
Verifies API keys, JWT tokens, certificates, and other credentials
Help you to publish APIs to external, partner, and internal
developers to unlock the potential of their data and services
High availability Responds to requests to perform operations at
least 99.9% of the time.
Analytics, metrics and many more
For further details you could have a look on official docs
Pricing
There are different categories of pricing available based on type and uses. See the below screen shot:
You even can read more details about pricing here
Logic Apps:
Azure Logic Apps is a cloud service that helps you schedule, automate, and orchestrate tasks, business processes, and workflows when you need to integrate apps, data, systems, and services across enterprises or organizations. Logic Apps simplifies how you design and build scalable solutions for app integration, data integration, system integration
Pros are
Maximum automation with hassle free service
Process and route orders across on-premises systems and cloud
services
Can move uploaded files from an SFTP or FTP server to Azure Storage
Help you connect legacy, modern, and cutting-edge systems more
easily and quickly by providing prebuilt APIs as Microsoft-managed
connectors
Pricing
Usually two categories of pricing you may have Consumption pricing model which depends on how much you consume and have to pay as per your consumption.
another one Fixed pricing model. See the screen shot:
You can have a look more details on official docs
Hope this would help you.
I have multiple services running on Service Fabric. I would like to add Application Insight for logging. I'm just wondering whether I have to add an Application Insight resource for each microservice or only one is common for all. What is the best practice?
There is no such thing a the best practice for this. It really depends. Some considerations:
Pricing: depending on the level (basic or enterprise) you will get an amount of data for free / included in the base price. See the docs. So in some cases, depending on the amount of traffic you can reduce costs by having a dedicated AI resource per service. AI resources for services that send data below the threshold of the AI pricing plan are then (almost) free.
Querying: if you split up services per AI resource getting an overview of the whole system is difficult since at the moment you cannot create queries spanning multiple AI resources.
Responsibility: If you have multiple teams working on multiple services it might be an option to have an AI resource per team so they have a good insight in only the parts they are responsible for.
If you do decide to use a shared AI resource there are options like custom telemetry initializers to include custom data that further identify which ASF application or service is sending the data if it is not included by default.
See also Add Application Insight to a existing Azure Service Fabric cluster for more info about how to integrate AI.
Now, when it comes to bring data together you do have some additional options that may or may not need additional services or configuration. For example:
PowerBi: You can visualize data of AI resources using dashboards, see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/application-insights/app-insights-export-power-bi
OMS: Operation Management Suite, See https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/msoms/2016/09/26/application-insights-connector-in-oms/. As Jesse mentions you can link multiple AI Resources
Custom dashboards: Using the rest api you can create your own solution that displays data for one or more AI resources.
since a couple of weeks I'm working with Microsoft Azure and I wonder if there is a possibility to create realtime charts in my Web App for external customers.
I know Microsoft provides two different services called 'Power BI', which supports realtime charts and 'Power BI embedded'. But my problem is that, as far as I know, Power BI is only intended for internal users and Power BI embedded, which is inteded for charts e.g. in Web Apps for external customers, only provides reports which are not realtime.
Am I missing something or is it currently not possible to provide realtime charts inside web apps with the given services of Azure? If yes, what would be alternatives to achieve my goal?
Thank you very much in advance.
Kind regards,
Felix
I would look at Power BI Embedded, with the data source using a Direct Query connection to Azure SQL Database or Azure SQL Datawarehouse. Every user action in the report (filtering, drilling etc) will generate a query against the database.
That Power BI Embedded architecture is explained on this page:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/power-bi-embedded/power-bi-embedded-what-is-power-bi-embedded
Direct Query is explained on this page:
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-azure-sql-database-with-direct-connect/
1) Consider that Real Time is like in an IOT scenario where you see your graphics on your dashboard moving in Real Time and not after a refresh. So in this context you should consider using Azure Stream Analytics Jobs. It's get an input from a blob storage, an event Hub, ..., and then in output you can use your power BI account to write in real time events ingested from Azure Streaming Analytics. Very powerfull! you use SQL for querying the input, the only thing to be aware is the thumbling time window that is somehow new to the SQL language.
2) Letting your customer access to the dashboard I would suggest you to pubblicate your dashboard for free access, and then secure your dashboard inside a web app on which you can apply a security pattern. You can also invite people outside of your organisation via email. Which is faster than the previous solution, but people accessing to your report must have a power BI Pro license. You can use the free trial for 60 days.
Hope that helps!
Cheers!