Network monitoring solutions
Azure offers a host of solutions to monitor your networking assets. Azure has solutions and utilities to monitor network connectivity, the health of ExpressRoute circuits, and analyze network traffic in the cloud.
Important
As of July 1, 2021, you can no longer add new tests in an existing workspace or enable a new workspace in Network Performance Monitor (NPM). You're also no longer able to add new connection monitors in Connection Monitor (Classic). You can continue to use the tests and connection monitors that you've created prior to July 1, 2021.
To minimize service disruption to your current workloads, migrate your tests from Network Performance Monitor, or migrate from Connection Monitor (Classic) to the new Connection Monitor in Azure Network Watcher before February 29, 2024.
Network Performance Monitor
Network Performance Monitor is a suite of capabilities that is geared towards monitoring the health of your network. Network Performance Monitor monitors network connectivity to your applications, and provides insights into the performance of your network. Network Performance Monitor is cloud-based and provides a hybrid network monitoring solution that monitors connectivity between:
Cloud deployments and on-premises locations
Multiple data centers and branch offices
Mission critical multi-tier applications/micro-services
User locations and web-based applications (HTTP/HTTPs)
Performance Monitor, ExpressRoute Monitor, and Service Connectivity Monitor are monitoring capabilities within Network Performance Monitor and are described in the following sections.
Performance Monitor
Performance Monitor is part of Network Performance Monitor and is network monitoring for cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments. You can monitor network connectivity across remote branch and field offices, store locations, data centers, and clouds. You can detect network issues before your users complain. The key advantages are:
Monitor loss and latency across various subnets and set alerts
Monitor all paths (including redundant paths) on the network
Troubleshoot transient and point-in-time network issues, that's difficult to replicate
Determine the specific segment on the network that is responsible for degraded performance
Monitor the health of the network, without the need for SNMP
For more information, view the following articles:
ExpressRoute Monitor
Network Performance Monitor for ExpressRoute offers comprehensive ExpressRoute monitoring for Azure Private peering and Microsoft peering connections. You can monitor E2E connectivity and performance between your branch offices and Azure over ExpressRoute. The key capabilities are:
Autodetection of ER circuits associated with your subscription
Detection of network topology from on-premises to your cloud applications
Capacity planning, bandwidth utilization analysis
Monitoring and alerting on both primary and secondary paths
Monitoring connectivity to Azure services such as Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, ... over ExpressRoute
Detect degradation of connectivity to virtual networks
For more information, see the following articles:
Service Connectivity Monitor
With Service Connectivity monitoring, you can now test reachability of applications and detect performance bottlenecks across on-premises, carrier networks and cloud/private data centers.
Monitor end-to-end network connectivity to applications
Correlate application delivery with network performance, detect precise location of degradation along the path between the user and the application
Test application reachability from multiple user locations across the globe
Determine network latency and packet loss for your line of business and SaaS applications
Determine hot spots on the network that may be causing poor application performance
Monitor reachability to Microsoft 365 applications, using built-in tests for Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Skype for Business and other Microsoft services
For more information, see the following articles:
Traffic Analytics
Traffic Analytics is a cloud-based solution that provides visibility into user and application activity on your cloud networks. NSG Flow logs are analyzed to provide insights into:
Traffic flows across your networks between Azure and Internet, public cloud regions, virtual networks, and subnets
Applications and protocols on your network, without the need for sniffers or dedicated flow collector appliances
Top talkers, chatty applications, VM conversations in the cloud, traffic hotspots
Sources and destinations of traffic across virtual networks, inter-relationships between critical business services and applications
Security – malicious traffic, ports open to the Internet, applications or VMs attempting Internet access…
Capacity utilization - helps you eliminate issues of over-provisioning or underutilization by monitoring utilization trends of VPN gateways and other services
Traffic Analytics equips you with information that helps you audit your organization’s network activity, secure applications and data, and optimize workload performance and stay compliant.
Related links:
DNS Analytics
DNS Analytics is built for DNS Administrators, this solution collects, analyzes, and correlates DNS logs to provide security, operations, and performance-related insights. Some of the capabilities are:
Identification of clients that try to resolve to malicious domains
Identification of stale resource records
Visibility into frequently queried domain names and talkative DNS clients
Visibility into the request load on DNS servers
Monitoring of dynamic DNS registration failures
Related links:
Miscellaneous
Feedback
Coming soon: Throughout 2024 we will be phasing out GitHub Issues as the feedback mechanism for content and replacing it with a new feedback system. For more information see: https://aka.ms/ContentUserFeedback.
Submit and view feedback for