Kategorie: Microsoft Azure

Azure Log Analytics – Container Monitoring Solution general availability, CNCF Landscape

Docker container is an emerging technology to help developers and devops with easy provisioning and continuous delivery in modern infrastructure. As containers can be ubiquitous in an environment, monitoring is essential. We've developed a monitoring solution which provides deep insights into containers supporting Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, Mesos DC/OS, and Service Fabric container orchestrators on multiple OS platforms. We are excited to announce the general availability for the Container Monitoring management solution on Azure Log Analytics, available in the Azure Marketplace today. 

"Every community contribution helps DC/OS become a better platform for running modern applications, and the addition of Azure Log Analytics Container Monitoring Solution into DC/OS Universe is a meaningful contribution, indeed," said Ravi Yadav, Technical Partnership Lead at Mesosphere. "DC/OS users are running a lot of Docker containers, and having the option to manage them with a tool like Azure Log Analytics Container Monitoring Solution will result in a richer user experience."

Microsoft recently joined the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and we continue to invest in open source projects. Azure Log Analytics is now part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Landscape under Monitoring Category.

Here's what the Container Monitoring Solution supports:

With this solution, you can:

See information about all container hosts in a single location
Know which containers are running, what image they’re running, and where they’re running
See an audit trail for actions on containers
Troubleshoot by viewing and searching centralized logs without remote login to the Docker hosts
Find containers that may be “noisy neighbors” and consuming excess resources on a host
View centralized CPU, memory, storage, and network usage and performance information for containers

 

New features available as part of the general availability include:

We've added new features to provide better insights to your Kubernetes cluster. With the new features, you can more easily narrow down container issues within a Kubernetes cluster. Now you can use search filters on you own custom pod labels and Kubernetes cluster hierarchies. With container process information, you can quickly see container process status for deeper health analysis. These features are only for Linux—additional Windows features are coming soon.

Kubernetes cluster awareness with at-a-glance hierarchy inventory from Kubernetes cluster to pods
New Kubernetes events
Capture custom pod labels and provides custom complex search filters
Provides container process information
Container Node Inventory including storage, network, orchestration type, and Docker version

For more information about how to use Container Monitoring solution, as well as the insights you can gather, see Containers solution in Log Analytics.

Learn more by reading previous blogs on Azure Log Analytics Container Monitoring.

How do I try this?

You can get a free subscription for Microsoft Azure so that you can test the Container Monitoring solution features.

How can I give you guys feedback?

There are a few different routes to give feedback:

UserVoice: Post ideas for new Azure Log Analytics features to work on. Visit the UserVoice page.
Forums: Visit the Azure Log Analytics Forums.
Email: Tell us whatever is on your mind by emailing us at OMScontainers@microsoft.com.

We plan on enhancing monitoring capabilities for containers. If you have feedback or questions, please feel free to contact us!
Quelle: Azure

Azure Monitor: Enhanced capabilities for routing logs and metrics

Today we are pleased to announce a new set of capabilities within Azure Monitor for routing your Azure resource diagnostic logs and metrics to storage accounts, Event Hubs namespaces, or Log Analytics workspaces. You can now create multiple resource diagnostic settings per resource, enabling you to route different permutations of log categories and metrics to different destinations (in public preview) and route your metrics and logs to a destination in a different subscription. In this post, we’ll walk through these new capabilities and how you can start using them today.

Creating multiple diagnostic settings

A resource diagnostic setting is a rule on an individual Azure resource that determines what logs and metrics among those available for that resource type are to be collected and to where that data will be sent. Resource diagnostic settings have three destinations, or ‘data sinks’ for monitoring data:

Storage accounts for archival
Log Analytics workspaces for search and analytics
Event Hubs namespaces for integration with 3rd party tools or custom solutions

Previously, only one diagnostic setting could be set per resource. We heard feedback that this was too restrictive in two ways:

It limited you to sending monitoring data to only one instance of each destination. For example, you could only send the logs and metrics for a particular Application Gateway to one storage account. If you have two independent teams for security and monitoring that each wanted to consume this data, this limited your ability to offer that data separately to both teams.
It required that you route the same permutation of log categories and metrics to all destinations. For example, it was impossible to route a particular Batch Account’s service logs into Log Analytics while sending that same account’s metrics into a storage account.

Today, we are introducing the public preview of the ability to create multiple diagnostic settings on a single resource, removing both restrictions above. Let’s take a quick look at how you can set this up in the Azure Portal. Navigate to the Monitor blade, and click on “Diagnostic Settings.”

You’ll notice we’ve renamed this section “Diagnostic Settings” from “Diagnostic Logs” to better reflect the ability to route both log and metric data from a resource. In this blade you’ll see a list of resources that support diagnostic settings. Clicking on one will show you a list of all settings on that resource.

If none exist, you will be prompted to create one.

Clicking “turn on diagnostics” will present the familiar blade for setting a diagnostic setting, but now you will see that a field for “name” has been added. Give your setting a name to differentiate between multiple settings on the same resource.

Click “save,” and now returning to the previous blade you will see the created setting and add an additional setting.

Adding more diagnostic settings will add them to this list. Note that you can have a maximum of three diagnostic settings per resource.

You can also do this using the REST API or in an ARM template. PowerShell support is coming soon. Note that routing data to an additional destination of the same type will incur a service fee per our billing information.

Writing monitoring data across subscriptions

Previously, you could only route metrics and log categories for a resource to a storage account, Event Hubs namespace, or Log Analytics workspace within the same subscription as the resource emitting data. For companies with centralized monitoring teams responsible for keeping track of many subscriptions, we heard that maintaining a destination resource per subscription was tedious, requiring knowledge of the unique storage account (or Event Hubs namespace or workspace) for each subscription. Now you can configure a diagnostic setting to send monitoring data to a destination in a different subscription, provided that your user account has appropriate write access to that destination resource.

Note that authentication is done within a particular Azure Active Directory tenant, so monitoring data can only be routed to a destination within the same tenant as the resource emitting data.

These new capabilities are rolling out to all public Azure regions beginning today. Try them out and let us know your feedback through our UserVoice channel or in the comments below.
Quelle: Azure

Azure Analysis Services web designer adds visual model editing to the preview

Last month we released a preview of the Azure Analysis Services web designer. This new browser-based experience will allow developers to start creating and managing Azure Analysis Services (AAS) semantic models quickly and easily. While SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) and SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) are still the primary tools for development, this new experience is intended to make modeling fast and easy. It is great for getting started on a new model or to do things such as adding a new measure to an existing model.

With this round of updates, we are adding the most significant modeling feature yet, the ability to edit your model visually with the new diagram editor.

This new diagram editor was designed for making changes on models with a large number of tables in mind. To make the best use of screen space, you are not required to make all the tables visible on the diagram at once. Tables can be dragged into the diagram from the table list and can be closed from view by clicking the three dots at the top right of the table.

New measures can also be added to a table by clicking on the same three dots and then clicking measures to bring up the measure editor. When you want to change the properties of a table, measure or column, you no longer need to do this one object at a time. With multi select, you can select as many objects as you want at one time and update the properties for all of them in one batch.

By dragging a column from one table to another, a relationship will be created between those tables. You can edit the relationship by clicking on the relationship line which will bring up the relationship editor.

While the new diagram editor is a great way to easily understand and make bulk changes to your model, you still have all of the power of the existing JSON editor. You can switch between the editors by changing the view at the top of the screen.

As you enhance your model, you can continuously test it out by switching to the query view at the top of the screen.

The query view will give you a preview of what your model will look like when used in tools like the Power BI desktop, and it will also let you run sample queries against your model so that you can check your data.

You can try the Azure Analysis web designer today by linking to it from a server in the Azure portal.

Submit your own ideas for features on our feedback forum. Learn more about Azure Analysis Services and the Azure Analysis Services web designer.
Quelle: Azure

Announcing the public preview of Azure Archive Blob Storage and Blob-Level Tiering

From startups to large organizations, our customers in every industry have experienced exponential growth of their data. A significant amount of this data is rarely accessed but must be stored for a long period of time to meet business continuity and compliance requirements. Examples include employee data, medical records, customer information, financial records, backups, etc. Additionally, recent and coming advances in artificial intelligence and data analytics are unlocking value from data that might have previously been discarded. Customers want to keep more of these data sets for a longer period but need a scalable and cost-effective solution to do so.

Last year, we launched Cool Blob Storage to help customers reduce storage costs by tiering their infrequently accessed data to the Cool tier. Today we’re announcing the public preview of Archive Blob Storage designed to help organizations reduce their storage costs even further by storing rarely accessed data in our lowest-priced tier yet. Furthermore, we’re excited to introduce the public preview of Blob-Level Tiering enabling you to optimize storage costs by easily managing the lifecycle of your data across these tiers at the object level.

The CEO of HubStor, a leading enterprise backup and archiving company, stated: “We are jumping for joy to see the amazing design Microsoft successfully implemented. Azure Archive Blob Storage is indeed an excellent example of Microsoft leapfrogging the competition.”

Azure Archive Blob Storage

Azure Archive Blob storage is designed to provide organizations with a low cost means of delivering durable, highly available, secure cloud storage for rarely accessed data with flexible latency requirements (on the order of hours). See Azure Blob Storage: Hot, cool, and archive tiers to learn more.

The Archive tier, in addition to Hot and Cool access tiers, is now available in Blob Storage accounts. Archive Storage characteristics include:

Cost-effectiveness: Archive access tier is our lowest priced storage offering. Customers with long-term storage which is rarely accessed can take advantage of this. For more details on regional preview pricing, see Azure Storage Pricing.
Seamless Integration: Customers use the same familiar operations on blobs in the Archive tier as on blobs in the Hot and Cool access tiers. This will enable customers to easily integrate the new access tier into their applications.
Availability: The Archive access tier will provide the same 99% availability SLA (at General Availability (GA)) offered by the Cool access tier.
Durability: All access tiers including Archive are designed to offer the same high durability that you have come to expect from Azure Storage with the same data replication options available today.
Security: All data in the Archive access tier is automatically encrypted at rest.

Blob-Level Tiering:  easily optimize storage costs without moving your data

To simplify data lifecycle management, we now allow customers to tier their data at the blob level.  Customers can easily change the access tier of a blob among the Hot, Cool, or Archive tiers as usage patterns change, without having to move data between accounts. Blobs in all three access tiers can co-exist within the same account.

Flexible management

Archive Storage and Blob-level Tiering will be available on all Blob Storage accounts. For customers with large volumes of data in General Purpose accounts, we will allow upgrading your account to get access to Cool, Archive, and Blob-level Tiering at GA.

A user may access the feature using .NET (see Figure 1), Python (preview), or Node.js client libraries or REST APIs initially. Support for the Java client library and portal (see Figure 2) will roll out over the next week. Other SDKs and tools will be supported in the next few months.

Figure 1: Set blob access tier using .NET client library

Figure 2: Set blob access tier in portal

Pricing

Pricing for Azure Archive Blob Storage during preview will be reduced. Please refer to the Azure Blobs Storage Pricing page for more details.

How to get started

To enroll in the public preview, you will need to submit a request to register this feature to your subscription. After your request is approved (within 1-2 days), any new LRS Blob Storage account you create in US East 2 will have the Archive access tier enabled, and all new accounts in all public regions will have blob-level tiering enabled. During preview, only LRS accounts will be supported but we plan to extend support to GRS and RA-GRS accounts (new and existing) as well at GA. Blob-level tiering will not be supported for any blob with snapshots. As with most previews, this should not be used for production workloads until the feature reaches GA.

To submit a request, run the following PowerShell or CLI commands.

PowerShell

Register-AzureRmProviderFeature -FeatureName AllowArchive -ProviderNamespace Microsoft.Storage

This will return the following response:

FeatureName ProviderName RegistrationState
———– ———— —————–
AllowArchive Microsoft.Storage Pending

It may take 1-2 days to receive approval.  To verify successful registration approval, run the following command:

Get-AzureRmProviderFeature -FeatureName AllowArchive -ProviderNamespace Microsoft.Storage

If the feature was approved and properly registered, you should receive the following output:

FeatureName ProviderName RegistrationState
———– ———— —————–
AllowArchive Microsoft.Storage Registered

CLI 2.0

az feature register –-namespace Microsoft.Storage –-name AllowArchive

This will return the following response:

{
"id": "/subscriptions/xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx/providers/Microsoft.Features/providers/Microsoft.Storage/features/AllowArchive",
"name": "Microsoft.Storage/AllowArchive",
"properties": {
"state": "Pending"
},
"type": "Microsoft.Features/providers/features"
}

It may take 1-2 days to receive approval.  To verify successful registration approval, run the following command:

-az feature show –-namespace Microsoft.Storage –-name AllowArchive

If the feature was approved and properly registered, you should receive the following output:

{
"id": "/subscriptions/xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx/providers/Microsoft.Features/providers/Microsoft.Storage/features/AllowArchive",
"name": "Microsoft.Storage/AllowArchive",
"properties": {
"state": "Registered"
},
"type": "Microsoft.Features/providers/features"
}

Get it, use it, and tell us about it

We’re confident that Azure Archive Blob Storage will provide another critical element for optimizing your organization’s cloud data storage strategy. As this is a preview, we look forward to hearing your feedback on these features, which you can send by email to us at archivefeedback@microsoft.com.
Quelle: Azure

Azure Network Watcher introduces Connectivity Check (Preview)

Diagnosing network connectivity and performance issues in the cloud can be a challenge as your network evolves in complexity. We are pleased to announce the preview of a new feature to check network connectivity in a variety of scenarios when using VM.

The Azure Network Watcher Connectivity Check feature helps to drastically reduce the amount of time needed to find and detect connectivity issues in the infrastructure. The results returned can provide valuable insights to whether a connectivity issue is due to a platform or a potential user configuration. Network Watcher Connectivity Check can be used from the Azure portal, using PowerShell, Azure CLI, and REST API.

Connectivity Check is supported in a variety of scenarios – VM to a VM, VM to an external endpoint, and VM to an on-premise endpoint. Leveraging a common and typical network topology, the example below illustrates how Connectivity Check can help resolve network reachability issues using the Azure portal. There is a VNet hosting a multi-tier web application and four subnets, amongst which are an application subnet and a database subnet.

Figure 1 – Multi-tier web application

On the Azure portal, navigate to Azure Network Watcher and under Network Diagnostic Tools click on Connectivity Check. Once there, you can specify the Source and Destination VM and click the “Check” button to begin the connectivity check.

A status indicating reachable or unreachable is returned once the connectivity check completes. The number of hops, the minimum, average and maximum latency to reach the destination are also returned.

Figure 2 – Connectivity Check – access from portal

In this example, a connectivity check was done from the VM running the application tier to the VM running the database tier. The status is returned as unreachable, and it’s important to note, one of the hops indicated a red status. Clicking on the hop indicates the presence of an NSG rule that is blocking all traffic, thereby blocking end-to-end connectivity.

Figure 3 – Unreachable status

The NSG rule configuration error was rectified and a connectivity check was repeated as illustrated below, where the results now indicate an end-to-end connectivity. The network latency between source and destination, along with hop information is also provided.

Figure 4 – Reachable status

The destination for Connectivity Check can be an IP address, an FQDN, or an ARM URI.
 
We believe the Connectivity Check feature will give you deeper insights to network performance in Azure. We welcome you to reach out, as your feedback from using Network Watcher is crucial to help steer the product development and eco system growth.
Quelle: Azure

New Offers in Azure Marketplace!

14 great new cloud offerings were published to Azure Marketplace last month. Check ‘em out!

– The Azure Marketplace Team

Denodo Platform:  is a leading data virtualization product that provides agile, high performance data integration and data abstraction across the broadest range of enterprise, cloud and big data sources; exposes real-time data models for expediting the use by other applications and business users. Learn more on Azure Marketplace.

Kinetica (BYOL):  is a GPU-accelerated, in-memory analytics database that delivers truly real-time response to queries on large, complex and streaming data sets: 100x faster performance than traditional databases. Learn more on Azure Marketplace.

Informatica Big Data Management 10.1.1. U2 (BYOL): provides data management solutions to quickly and holistically integrate, govern, and secure big data for your business. Learn more on Azure Marketplace.

Lumify: Altamira LUMIFY is a powerful big data fusion, analysis, and visualization platform that supports the development of actionable intelligence. Learn more on Azure Marketplace.

AppGate: AppGate for Azure supports fine-grained, dynamic access control to Azure resources. Learn more on Azure Marketplace.

NetConnect: NetConnect secures data by locking it within the cloud environment, and enabling users to remotely interact with files and applications as if they were local to their device. Learn more on Azure Marketplace.

SQLstream Blaze: Enterprises like Amazon use SQLstream Blaze to easily build, test, deploy, or update streaming applications in minutes, that keep operations running at optimal efficiency, protect systems from security threats, and support real-time customer engagement. Learn more on Azure Marketplace.

CARTO Builder:  solves this with its drag and drop analytics capabilities, by empowering business analysts to optimize operations and quickly deploy location applications. Learn more on Azure Marketplace.

vSEC:CMS C-Series: The vSEC:CMS system is fully functional with minidriver enabled smart cards and it streamlines all aspects of a smart card management system by connecting to enterprise directories. Learn more on Azure Marketplace.

VU Application Server: Manage all your security with simplicity Administrate your policies in a flexible platform VU Application Server is the authentication server that allows companies, institutions and organizations to unfold a robust authentication strategy for local & remote access to applications. Learn more on Azure Marketplace.

Identity Orchestration and Management Portal: Imagine collapsing multiple management portals for the many online services and on-premise applications into a single management interface in a browser. Learn more on Azure Marketplace.

Solution Templates

Viptela vEdge Cloud Router (3 NICs): Viptela vEdge Cloud is a software router that supports all of the capabilities available on Viptela's industry leading SD-WAN platform. Learn more on Azure Marketplace.

Informatica Big Data Management 10.1.1. U2 (BYOL): provides data management solutions to quickly and holistically integrate, govern, and secure big data for your business. Learn more on Azure Marketplace.

Teradata Server Management: monitors Teradata Database instances and generates alerts related to database and OS errors and operational state changes. Learn more on Azure Marketplace.

Quelle: Azure