Azure Network Watcher’s new and improved Connection Monitor now provides unified end-to-end connection monitoring capabilities for hybrid and Azure deployments. Users can now use the same solution to monitor connectivity for on-premises, Azure, and multi-cloud setups. In this preview phase, the solution brings together the best of two key capabilities—Network Watcher’s Connection Monitor and Network Performance Monitor’s (NPM) Service Connectivity Monitor. Check out the documentation and start using Connection Monitor to check connectivity in your network.
The monitoring question
Customers have long stressed over the need for unified connection monitoring for hybrid deployments, where complex applications transact across Azure, on-premises, and with other public applications to deliver business-critical functionality. These challenges escalate in multi-cloud environments. Monitoring teams then wrestle with basic challenges including:
- Which monitoring solution to use in these complex set-ups?
- Do I need different monitoring solutions for on-premises and Azure or any other clouds?
- Where does my data go and how do I correlate data from multiple sources?
- How do I get the fastest alerts when things go wrong in my network?
Connection Monitor in preview
With the new Connection Monitor, you can now configure both Azure and non-Azure virtual machines and hosts for monitoring connectivity to global endpoints from a single console. You can set up Connection Monitor and create multiple test groups for various use cases including connectivity between Azure regions, connectivity to Office 365, and connectivity between app and database tiers. With the ability to add multiple sources and destinations in one test group, configuring monitoring gets much easier. You also benefit from an aggregated view of your network parameters, with the ability to drill down to individual links at the time of troubleshooting.
You can monitor loss and latency of network connections both within Azure and between Azure and external destinations, and view the topology to localize issues. The solution identifies the top five tests in your Connection Monitor, test groups, sources, and destinations, then highlights potential problem tests. For Azure resources, issues with your hops are shown in the topology.
Alerts and data storage
Monitoring data is stored in both Azure Monitor as metrics and in Log Analytics workspaces. You can now set up fast, metrics-based alerts to react to issues expeditiously. To build additional correlations on your historical data, use Log Analytics queries.
Other benefits
- Single console for configuring and monitoring connectivity and network quality from Azure and on-premises virtual machines and hosts.
- Monitor multiple endpoints within and across Azure regions, on-premises sites, and global service locations.
- Higher and configurable probing frequencies.
- More protocols supported to give better visibility into network performance.
- Cross-region, cross-workspace monitoring.
- Access to historical monitoring data retained in Log Analytics.
- Rich user experience.
- Automation through PowerShell and CLI.
Start monitoring today
The new Connection Monitor feature will be available for no charge during preview. The general availability pricing for Connection Monitor will be available soon on the pricing page. For more details, please visit the Connection Monitor (Preview) documentation.
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