How to Manage Azure and Get Your Environment Back On Track

Here are highlights from Agile IT CEO Conrad Agramont’s webinar, “Avoiding Cloud Failure: Get Back on Track With Your Azure Environment.” Click here to watch the full webinar.

You’ve migrated to Azure. But are you using it to its full potential?

Many businesses migrate to Azure and grow from there. But it’s easy to slip into bad habits. Without proper management, deployment costs will spiral out of control and performance can dip.

Struggling to get the most out of your Azure environment? See how Agile IT can help.

Where Businesses Fall Short With Azure

Businesses encounter several common pitfalls when they first migrate to Azure, mainly around security, performance and cost. Here are the most common customer complaints we hear about Azure. Plus, we’ll share how to manage Azure to combat these pitfalls and get your environment back on track.

Get Back on Track With Azure Security

Security is the number one concern we hear from businesses. While the cloud is safe, security is a joint responsibility between Microsoft and the customer. You need to manage Azure security actively.

Here’s how to control storage security and protect your data during access and when it’s at rest.

• Secure your cloud resources with Azure Security Center. With Azure Security Center, you get full visibility into your cloud security. You can quickly detect and respond to threats, and proactively mitigate risks to reduce exposure to attacks.
• Monitor cloud health with Azure Log Analytics. Use Azure Log Analytics to collect and store data from any source. You gain operational insights into your business to detect, diagnose and fix issues quickly.

CEO pro tip: It’s a good idea to use two to three tools, such as Log Analytics and a patch management tool to monitor your systems. Not all systems will tell you the same thing, and it’ll help you stay on top of your cloud health. See how to use data encryption methods to secure your cloud.

Improve Azure Performance Issues

Many companies also gripe about their Azure performance. There are usually several reasons for this.

You may have deployed too quickly. Or, your Azure deployment isn’t going as planned. Maybe it’s not meeting your expectations. Or your costs are growing, but you’re not sure why. Use the following tools to identify performance issues:

• Azure Resource health diagnoses when an Azure issue impacts your resources. You get insight into current and past resource health to mitigate problems and improve performance.
• Azure Monitor gives you quick access to monitor all tasks in Azure including activity logs, metrics, alerts and diagnostics.
• Network Watcher allows you to monitor, diagnose and get insights into your network.

These tools aren’t the final answer.

Your infrastructure needs may change in the future. If you’re running into performance issues, take a look at your IT infrastructure. The right disk architecture can manage and improve performance — you may need to scale your networking infrastructure to fit your business needs.

Rein in Expensive, Messy Costs

Managing costs and capabilities are different in the cloud. It’s not a one-time purchase, but a balancing act between performance and cost to find the right fit for your organization. Not all storage options provide the same performance. But performance can have a significant impact on cost. If your expenses are growing, but you’re not sure why, here are a few steps you can take.

• Use Azure Policy to audit and enforce deployment rules. It will help you control your Azure environment and manage costs. You can set policies and use them to manage costs. For example, you can restrict deployment to specific datacenters and establish tagging standards to drive accountability.
• Take a look at your storage and compute costs. Continuously evaluate your compute usage and any updates in compute types and pricing.
• Hybrid Use Rights. If you’re migrating a server that already has an “on-premises” Windows license, you can run virtual machines on Azure at a reduced cost.

Have More Questions on How to Manage Azure?

Your Azure environment should be a robust platform that reduces costs and improves performance. But it needs to be managed. If you’re struggling with Azure, give us a call. We can help you assess, manage and scale your Azure environment so you see the benefits, not the headaches. Give us a call today.