Comment HPE’s Synergy is, it thinks, the next great advance in servers and is far more capable than hyper-converged infrastructure systems, being able to provision bare metal as well as servers for virtual workloads as well as containerised ones.

Getting a grip on this beast is tricky. Is it a form of dynamically reconfigurable hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) with separately scalable compute, storage and networking? Yes, in a way it is, but HPE would position it apart from HCI, as we shall see later.

The basic Synergy element is a 10U rackmount chassis, somewhat similar to its C-Class chassis but taking specific servers, not standard ones. This chassis can take a mix of server and storage frames which slot in from the front and has a set of network nodes at the back, with a single master node. These nodes obviate the need for a separate top of rack networking switch.

The chassis also has a front-mount Composer, a dedicated server with storage and networking. This runs a version of Linux, auto-discovers Synergy compute, storage and networking (fabric) elements, and provides the OneView command facility for managing Synergy.

Front and rear views of Synergy rack. At the rear the blue cables interconnect Composer modules in each frame

Synergy frames can scale out, with four per rack, if your floors can stand the weight, and then via adding another rack. The Composers in each Synergy chassis hook up with each other via a dedicated management net, providing a control plane for the system separate from the operational compute and data plane.

HPE UK’s FSI Strategic Accounts Presales Consultant Joe Hardy with Synergy Composer module.

Composer module with lid removed.

Users set up named server profiles, defining compute, firmware, OS, storage and networking resources for example, and then these can be simply provisioned to workloads: for example, a database workload template. Synergy can be managed through RESTful APIs as well.

Synergy OneView 3 screenshot. Note server profile area middle left.

Server nodes can have direct-attached on-blade storage. This can be, for example, SAS 2.5-inch disk or NVMe SSDs.

As well as the in-frame storage nodes Synergy chassis’ can use external SAN or NAS storage, such as 3PAR StorServe, connected by Fibre Channel or Ethernet, part or all of which gets allocated to the Synergy storage resource pool via, say, volumes allocated to workloads running on Synergy.

Both Synergy storage and networking are virtualised into Synergy-wide pools and compute blades can be aggregated for a workload. But individual CPUs on a server blade can’t be separately dedicated to workloads with other server nodes; the server blade is as granular as compute gets for now. Similarly memory can’t be separately virtualised into a Synergy-wide pool. When Intel’s Silicon Photonics is adopted by Synergy in the future then this, with operating system help, might become possible.

Joe Hardy showing Synergy server node with lid removed.

As servers adopt non-volatile storage-class memory then Synergy will adopt them too via Synergy server blades using non-volatile Memristor, XPoint or some other media technology. It will also adopt HPE’s developing Machine concept, with Synergy in one sense, being a Machine precursor.

Server inventiveness

HPE says it has some 100 beta customers testing Synergy. As you look at the hardware, the 10U chassis and its components, the Composer module and the OneView v3 software, you realise this is a substantial and distinctive effort. A lot of development money is being spent here. No other server vendor has anything like Synergy; not Cisco, not Dell, not Fujitsu, Hitachi, Huawei, Lenovo nor any other mainstream server vendor you can think of.

Paul Miller, HPE’s marketing VP for Converged Data Centre Infrastructure, bangs the HPE server inventiveness drum, saying HPE was first with x86 servers, first with a 1U pizza box-format server, first to launch blade servers, and is now the first to launch composable infrastructure servers. Everyone else, he says, including Dell, follows HPE.

Synergy storage module.

Synergy and HCI

Hyper-converged infrastructure systems converged and integrate server, storage and networking with server virtualisation software to apps in virtual machines in a scale-out system environment using virtual SAN software, such as VMware’s VSAN. HPE has its hyper-converged HC 380 product, ones that use StoreVirtual virtual SAN software and ProLiant DL380 servers.

Synergy opens up that idea, expands on it, to have a Synergy frame as the basic element, within which you can mix and match variable compute, server and network elements. The HCIA single SKU buying simplicity goes away but the operational flexibility and simplicity benefits gained instead could be huge, quite apart from Synergy providing bare-metal servers as well as support for containerisation.

Also Synergy is built as a platform with a10 year-plus life. Different compute, storage and networking elements and technologies can come along and be adopted by the Synergy chassis and software; that’s the theory. So, for example, Intel’s Silicon Photonics can be adopted inside Synergy, and also outside. Once the3PAR StorServe arrays get Silicon Photonics support then Synergy links to external storage will run at 100Gbit/s speed.

How this would work alongside or with NVMe over Fabrics is unclear. It could simply be an alternative to 100Gbit/s Ethernet cables and still carry Ethernet protocol signals and data, in which case NVMeF running across Silicon Photonics cables will be theoretically okay.

Innovation buzzwordery? Yes – and no

Synergy is a multi-million dollar investment by HPE involving server, storage and networking hardware, adapted C-Class chassis, development of the Composer module, and extension of the OneView management software facility, Looking at the racks of Synergy hardware and nodes within the frames it’s obvious that this is a big iron effort. The thing looks like a software-defined private cloud, mini data centres in 10U cans with dynamically re-usable elements.

Marketing buzzwordery surrounds it; infrastructure as code, the ideas economy, innovating fearlessly in an age of business disruption, IT must build innovation engines, and IT must become value creators and deliver business outcomes. Synergy is about accelerating the digital enterprise to innovate fearlessly. There’s even a Composable Infrastructure for Dummies book – no, really – which tells you how to turn your data centre into an a revenue generator with composable infrastructure.

But step aside from this slick deluge of wordsmithing and Synergy looks pretty damn good. Will it take off? That’s the question, and HPE is giving its best shot, pouring EVPs into marketing events and demo’ing the hardware.

If the operational flexibility, CAPEX and OPEX benefits are real and replicable from customer to customer then HPE will have a good and distinctive story to tell and pass through its channel. And Meg Whitman will have product technology to smile about. ®

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Location, location, location! It turns out that mantra is not just for the real estate market. Location is a critical aspect of fog computing as well.

Cisco introduced the notion of fog computing about two and a half years ago. (See Cisco unveils ‘fog computing’ to bridge clouds and the Internet of Things.) This distributed computing architecture addresses the challenge of backhauling a lot of raw data generated in the field –say from thousands or millions of IoT devices – to the cloud for analysis.

Fog computing, also called edge computing, has some of the data processing and analysis take place at the edge location, close to the devices that are generating the data. The edge nodes have sufficient processing capabilities to capture, distil and analyze data and send only the most relevant information up to the cloud where further action can take place; for example, sending an alert that a piece of equipment in the field is about to fail.

It’s easy to conceive how this works when the edge node is in a permanent location, say on a factory floor, and it can communicate with the corresponding cloud component over Wi-Fi with relative stability. But what if the location of the edge node is always changing because it is, quite literally, in motion? For example, consider the edge node being on a bus, on a megaship full of shipping containers, or on a first responder vehicle like a police car or ambulance.

Unlike in real estate, a questionable location doesn’t have to be a show stopper. LILEE Systems has recently announced a fog computing platform to address the broad needs of mobile deployments in distributed enterprises.

Since its founding in 2009, LILEE has focused on the challenges of enterprise organizations deploying and managing equipment and keeping people, machines and IoT devices connected to the corporate network as they became more mobile. The company honed its fog computing solutions on the railroad industry, where trains and working crews present a mobile component but there is also equipment on the wayside that is doing sensor monitoring of the track conditions. LILEE has put network equipment on trains and on the wayside, and has software management tools to manage M2M communications and look for alerts and conduct analytics.

The company says it does business with five of the seven Class I railroads in the U.S., and is now branching out to other markets that can benefit from having fog nodes at the edge. Specifically, the company is targeting markets such as freight and supply chain; industrial, with remote facilities and monitoring needs; smart cities, including distributed traffic lights and video surveillance; first responders such as police, ambulance and fire trucks; retail where there is a need for point-of-sale backup, digital displays and other in-store services; commercial fleets with a vast mobile workforce; and education, both at schools and in buses.

In mid September, LILEE announced a series of hardened fog computing gateway devices and a cloud management platform designed to make it easier for distributed enterprises to deploy and manage their nodes at the edge.

The LILEE TransAir STS product series is a “5 in 1” gateway—basically an industrial PC with routing capabilities. The platform is comprised of cloud management, communication, and fog computing capabilities, along with application interfaces and sensors. In designing this product, LILEE says it considered the needs of the IT group to have the gateway device be as easy as possible to set up and configure so that remote deployment doesn’t require significant IT skills.

LILEE provides cellular and Wi-Fi router capability in the box that enables connection to the cloud. As the device is powered up, it connects to LILEE’s backend cloud-based management offering, T-cloud, to get its configuration and provisioning information. Once the device identifies itself, the applications it needs can be downloaded. For example, if this edge device is going into a coffee shop, it might need applications for point-of-sale, digital signage and customer Wi-Fi. All of that can come straight from the cloud platform, run on the local platform, and be managed from the cloud.

The gateway supports a variety of local interfaces, including Ethernet, serial port, USB port, HDMI for display, and more. It also supports sensors such as OBD for vehicle analytics, gyroscope and accelerometer for anything that is changing location, and digital I/O for any sort of binary emergency or panic switches.

Software that runs on the fog computing’s industrial PC can enable the applications to interact through customized interfaces as well as through the various sensors, and all of that information can be analyzed on that fog computing engine locally or up in the cloud. The real benefit is being able to distribute that analysis between the IT department that is looking at that from the cloud or from the branch side that is actually managing their own environment locally.

Vendor supplied

The value of this solution can be better understood through a couple of use cases.

A long-haul bus company has a video system installed to monitor the passengers and make sure everyone is sitting calmly. The bus is moving so the only way to get that information to the cloud is over LTE. It’s too expensive to funnel all that video straight to the cloud for analysis, so an on-board fog platform does the video analysis locally. Most of the data is going to be benign as people sit quietly, but if some passengers get into an argument and cause a stir that might give the driver some concern, the analytics software on the fog node sends up an alert and starts sending the video stream back to the bus company’s cloud instance. There it can be permanently recorded in the event that an incident ensues.

In another bussing scenario, there’s a company that provides private bussing services to corporate clients who have employees that commute long distances. The passengers are all picked up in one location and may spend two or more hours on the bus daily to get to and from a work location. The bus company has a fog computing node on the vehicle that enables the corporate client’s business applications for these workers, so they can use a VPN to get to email, videoconferences, etc. Again, bandwidth matters, so some of the processing is offloaded to the local node before being passed off to the cloud.

In a first responder situation, there is a mission critical aspect of video surveillance, tracking license plates, sending a patient’s vital signs to a hospital, or detecting where all the firefighters are in a fire. These kinds of things can be core applications that are deployed locally to the police, fire or EMT vehicles. In addition, the vehicles themselves may need to be monitored to make sure they are running well. LILEE’s solution provides connectivity to the OBD2 port which monitors and manages all the sensors across the vehicle. Relevant data can be sent to the cloud as needed, say to notify a dispatch group of dangerous situations in the field.

As mobility increases and IoT proliferates, distributed enterprises will be challenged to support applications in their remote locations. LILEE’s fog computing platform looks like a good way to support them.

The emergence of application containers has come with questions about where this technology fits in the enterprise technology landscape, and more specifically how it compares to virtual machines.

+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Are containers VM killers?

A new report from 451 Research has some provocative findings on just how advantageous containers could be, not just for developers and operators, but for the finance team too.

“451 Research believes containers are better placed, at least theoretically, to achieve lower TCO (total cost of ownership) than traditional hardware virtualization,” 451 Researchers Owen Rogers and Jay Lyman write. “In fact, we have found that double-digit resource savings are achievable even with relatively simple implementations.”

+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: 10 Tips for a successful cloud plan +

The key to Rogers and Lyman’s research is the notion that containers are an operating system-level virtualization. Hardware virtualization uses a hypervisor to create virtual machines and each of those VMs has its own operating system. Containers, on the other hand, virtualize the operating system so multiple containers share the OS. This creates efficiencies.

“Containers have the same consolidation benefits of any virtualization technology, but with one major benefit – there is less need to reproduce operating system code,” Owens and Lyman write in the report. You can pack more on to a server that is running containers and one version of an OS compared to a server running a hypervisor with multiple copies of an OS.

For example, a server that is hosting 10 applications in 10 virtual machines would have 10 copies of the OS running in each VM. In a containerized model without virtual machines, those 10 applications could all –theoretically – share a single version of the OS. Rogers and Lyman say this create double-digit percentage resource savings of server processing using containers versus VMs. “Operating system virtualization does a better job of consolidation than hardware virtualization, simply because there is less duplication and therefore less resource consumption,” the researchers found. Having fewer operating systems yields other benefits. For example management is less cumbersome because there are fewer OS security updates.

So should containers replace all VMs?

VMs aren’t going away

Virtual machines still have an important place in enterprise technology, Rogers and Lyman say. “Anytime new technology comes along, it’s not as simple as flipping a switch and start seeing savings,” says Sushil Kumar, CMO at container-based software defined networking startup Robin Systems. Kumar notes that when virtualization was first gaining traction in the early 2000s, it was first implemented in test and development environments. Even today, Kumar says some applications like virtual desktops and enterprise applications like SharePoint run just fine in virtual machines and benefit from having hypervisor isolation of VMs.

There are other factors to consider beyond cost. Using containers outside of VMs requires the ability to provision and manage bare metal servers, for instance, which could involve some additional cost.

“There are benefits to VMs in more mature security, tooling, management and process, which is why we expect – just as there are still physical machines alongside today’s VMs – there will likely be VMs alongside containers,” Rogers and Lyman write. “Nevertheless, efficiency, scalability and performance factors (including the cost advantage) will undoubtedly mean more disruption to VMs from the advent of containers.”

There are two major types of public cloud computing attacks: single-tenant and cross-tenant. A cross-tenant attack is the stuff of IT nightmares, but it has not yet occurred. (In a cross-tenant attack, the hackers gain root-level access to the cloud and thus access to most or all of the tenants — including you.)

Single-tenant breaches are more likely to occur. In these attacks, the hacker has compromised one or more machine instance, but can’t go beyond that. The most likely cause of a single-tenant breach is that user IDs and passwords have been compromised. That’s typically due to malware or phishing attacks on client devices. In this case, it’s all on you; the cloud provider has done its job, but you haven’t done yours. 

When such breaches occur, hopefully you’ll figure it out quickly. When you recognize the breach, the best response is to invoke a prebuilt set of processes that can do the following:

1. Shut down the instances — computer, storage, or both — that have been compromised. That prevents any activity, whether good or bad, until the problem has been corrected.
2. Audit the security system to determine how the attackers gained access and what they did while in the system. Isolate the hackers and remove their access from the system.
3. Resecure the system and make users change their passwords before they are granted renewed access.

Of course, this does not address the core problem — it only fixes a single intrusion. To address the core vulnerabilities of single-tenant attacks:

1. Establish proactive monitoring mechanisms to ensure that odd activity is spotted quickly, and the relevant cloud instances are defended. For example, monitor for access from a foreign IP address and for multiple login failures.
2. Consider using encryption, at least with your data at rest. That way, even if hackers gain access, your data remains protected.
3. Implement identity and access management.
4. Consider using multifactor authentication and other types of access mechanisms that provide better protection at the user-access level.
5. Review the security services that your cloud provider offers, and consider using any that apply. It can be better to use the native security capabilities than to bolt on your own or those of third parties.

As more workloads move into the public cloud, we’ll see more attacks. That’s what happens when any platform, cloud or not, gains popularity. But if you’re proactive and invest in modern security mechanisms, you’ll discover that the cloud is a more secure place for your applications and data than your datacenter has been.

Google has announced a big expansion of its cloud, with new regions planned for Mumbai, Singapore, Sydney, Northern Virginia, São Paulo, London, Finland and Frankfurt … and those are just the ones it plans to turn on during 2017. The company’s also planning to announce more regions in the future.

Perhaps more importantly, Google is also putting some consulting muscle behind its cloud, announcing it’s created new “Customer Reliability Engineering” roles “designed to deepen our partnership with customers. CRE is comprised of Google engineers who integrate with a customer’s operations teams to share the reliability responsibilities for critical cloud applications.”

“This integration represents a new model in which we share and apply our nearly two decades of expertise in cloud computing as an embedded part of a customer’s organization.”

Google’s cloud veep Brian Stevens says, “We’ll have more to share about this soon.”

But back to those new bit barns. Google says they’re needed because a billion people rely on services delivered from its cloud, and more capacity will mean lower latency. The company looks to have put as much effort into connectivity as it has into the data centres themselves: its shiny new map (see top of story or here for those of you on our mobile site) shows network links between bit barns around the globe.

The company is also starting to emphasise the role it thinks Kubernetes can play in the hybrid cloud, pointing out that the new version 1.4 now allows clustered implementations that span “multiple clouds, whether they are on-prem, on a different public cloud vendor, or a hybrid of both.”

Google’s gradually turning up the heat on Kubernetes, emphasising its origins at Google and therefore its cloud’s capabilities as a fine place to run the container orchestration code. Throw in the new support offering and its emphasis on using Google’s expertise to run your cloud, and Google’s position as a cloud for cloud-native and containerised apps is becoming clearer.

But the main thing that changes after this announcement is that Google now has reach to match Amazon Web Services, Azure and SoftLayer. But it’s not a killer blow: AWS on Wednesday announced a new region in Paris, France. ®

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I’ll bet that somewhere, perhaps at home and most likely at work, you’ve got some old hardware lying around. What to do with it? It still works but what’s it running? Windows XP? Vista? Windows 7 Starter or Home Basic?

Yep, you’re stuck on some old version of Windows but moving that machine up to a newer version of Windows could be tricky ‘cause one or more of those old graphics cards and printer drivers have probably have fallen out of the update cycle. 

Even if those subsystems are still available, you’ll still have a problem as the newer OSs’ are pretty much guaranteed to suck the life out of old processors with the result that performance and therefore usability will be marginal at best.

So, what to do? Before you start looking for a deal on a new machine and an e-waste disposal site, consider moving to Linux and, most specifically, consider migrating to LXLE, the LXDE eXtra Luxury Edition (though some people also claim it stands for Lubuntu Extra Life Extension).

Based on Lubuntu and using the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment (LXDE) graphical user interface, LXLE is small, fast, and …

… designed to be a drop-in and go OS, primarily for aging computers. Its intention is to be able to install it on any computer and be relatively done after install. At times removing unwanted programs or features is easier than configuring for a day. Our distro follows the same LTS schedule as Ubuntu. In short, LXLE is an eclectic respin* of Lubuntu with its own user support.

While the good people behind LXLE tout the distribution as a replacement for old versions of  Windows, the reality is that non-Linux users are going to have to learn a few new concepts. That said, with other distros, one of the pain points would be maintaining the system which would usually involve updating the package list, then updating the packages, then deleting unwanted files, and … it’s all a tedious and rather techie process. 

LXLE has included a package, uCareSystem Core, that takes a lot of the pain out of keeping everything up to date and “cruft free”. To be honest, uCareSystem could be better integrated by, for example, having a GUI entry to launch it (you currently have to invoke it from a terminal session) as well as being run automatically on a schedule. Even so, including uCareSystem is a step in the right direction.     

The latest release of LXLE, version 16.04, is a 1.29GB download. I first installed it in a Virtual Machine under Parallels 12 with Parallel Tools and then on an old laptop and wow! LXLE really is fast. You can also find both 32- and 64-bit LXLE 14.04 and 32-bit LXLE 12.04 virtual machines for both VirtualBox and VMware on OSboxes.org (none of the VMs come with the guest additions installed and also note that contrary to what OSboxes says, the usernames for the VMs are “osboxes.org” not “osboxes”).

So, if you’re looking for a lightweight Linux-based operating system to extend the life of old hardware or you want bring old equipment back from retirement or want a low overhead, high performance i386 platform, check out LXLE.

Comments? Thoughts? Drop me a line or comment below then follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

* “Respin,” a remastered version of a major Linux distro tailored for a specific purpose or group.

Quite a lot of news came out of the Microsoft Ignite 2016 conference, most of which we have already covered. But there’s more, as Microsoft announced a big upgrade to its OneDrive cloud storage service.

Microsoft wants to provide a single sync client for all of its cloud storage services, whether its OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or SharePoint, and it has been for some time. To achieve this, it has added the ability to sync SharePoint Online document libraries with OneDrive folders,and added an “activity center” to the OneDrive sync client to allow you to view synchronization and file activity at a glance.

You won’t need OneDrive to see shared folders from others, either. The new update adds the ability to get to folders from someone else’s OneDrive that are shared with you through the Windows File Explorer.

Microsoft also updated the OneDrive browser to add rich thumbnails and previews for over 20 new file types. This feature will be rolled out before the end of 2016. You will also have the ability to access and edit all of your files in OneDrive and SharePoint Online from the OneDrive browser client and be able to download multiple files as a single .zip file. These two features will also be rolling out before the end of the year. 

On the mobile side of things, Android and iOS devices will now receive a notification when someone shares a file with you. Android users will be able to access SharePoint Online files in the Android OneDrive app, and the app has been given multi-page scan enhancements. For iOS, you will have the ability to see over time how many people have discovered and viewed your files in OneDrive.

Microsoft promises more Office 365 integration, as well. For example, you’ll have a notification in the ribbon if someone is editing a file at the same time as you and who it is, and you can even launch Skype for Business to talk to that person about it. Also, when you open the File menu, you’ll now see options that have recently been shared with you, in addition to your last used local files. 

For IT pros, Microsoft will be adding per-user controls to the Office 365 User Management console. Admins will be able to sign a user out of their account in the event of the employee leaving or being fired or if the account is somehow compromised, such as if it is lost or stolen.

The IEEE has approved the specification covering 2.5 Gbps and 5 Gbps Ethernet, 802.11bz.

In particular, the approval signifies that the work item still incomplete at the end of 2015, the interface between the Media Access Control (MAC) and the physical (PHY) layers has been completed.

Last December, NBase-T Alliance leader Peter Jones explained to El Reg that the group wanted 802.11bz to provide connectivity to the latest-generation 802.11ac Wi-Fi kit without replacing existing Cat 5e/6 cabling.

As Jones blogs here:

With the astonishingly huge installed base of Cat5e/6 unshielded twisted pair (UTP) copper cable—70 billion meters and 1.3 billion outlets at last count—organisations across industries were facing an impending crisis. A new generation of 802.11ac Wave 2 devices was on the way and looking directly at a 1Gb/s roadblock.

The IEEE’s approval means vendors can accelerate the rollout of products (which had already began, in the time-honoured practice of rolling pre-standard product).

Work on 802.11bz began in 2014. The Nbase-T alliance board consists of Aquantia, Cisco, CME Consulting, Intel, Marvell, NXP and Xilinx. ®

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Today we are excited to announce the public preview of Azure Monitor, a new service making inbuilt monitoring available to all Azure users. This preview release builds on some of the monitoring capabilities that already exist for Azure resources. With Azure Monitor, you can consume metrics and logs within the portal and via APIs to gain more visibility into the state and performance of your resources. Azure Monitor provides you the ability to configure alert rules to get notified or to take automated actions on issues impacting your resources. Azure Monitor enables analytics, troubleshooting, and a unified dashboarding experience within the portal, in addition to enabling a wide range of product integrations via APIs and data export options. In this blog post, we will take a quick tour of Azure Monitor and discuss some of the product integrations.

Quick access to all monitoring tasks

With Azure Monitor, you can explore and manage all your common monitoring tasks from a single place in the portal. To access Azure Monitor, click on the Monitor tab in the Azure portal. You can find Activity logs, metrics, diagnostics logs, and alert rules as well as quick links to the advanced monitoring and analytics tools. Azure Monitor provides these three types of data – Activity Log, Metrics, and Diagnostics Logs.

Activity Log

Operational issues are often caused by a change in the underlying resource. Activity Log keeps track of all the operations performed on your Azure resources. You can use the Activity Log section in the portal to quickly search and identify operations that may impact your application. Another valuable feature of the portal is the ability to pin Activity log queries on your dashboard to keep a tab on the operations you are interested in. For example, you can pin a query that filters Error level events and keep track of their count in the dashboard. You can also perform instant analytics on Activity Log via Log Analytics, part of Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS).

Metrics

With the new Metrics tab, you can browse all the available metrics for any resource and plot them on charts. When you find a metric that you are interested in, creating an alert rule is just a single click away. Most Azure services now provide out-of-the-box, platform-level metrics at 1-minute granularity and 30-day data retention, without the need for any diagnostics setup. The list of supported resources and metrics is available here. These metrics can be accessed via the new REST API for direct integration with 3rd party monitoring tools.

Diagnostics logs

Many Azure services provide diagnostics logs, which contain rich information about operations and errors that are important for auditing as well as troubleshooting purposes. In the new Diagnostic logs tab, you can manage diagnostics configuration for your resources and select your preferred method of consuming this data.

Alerts & automated actions

Azure Monitor provides you the data to quickly troubleshoot issues. But you want to be proactive and fix issues before it impacts your customers. With Alert rules, you can get notified whenever a metric crosses a threshold. You can receive email notifications or kick off an Automation-runbook script or webhook to fix the issue automatically. You can also configure your own metrics using custom metrics and events APIs to send data to Azure Monitor pipeline and create alert rules on them. With the ability to create alerts rules on platform, custom and app-level metrics, you now have more control on your resources. You can learn more about alert rules here.

Single monitoring dashboard

Azure provides you a unique single dashboard experience to visualize all your platform telemetry, application telemetry, analytics charts and security monitoring. You can share these dashboards with others on your team or clone a dashboard to build new ones.

Extensibility

The portal is a convenient way to get started with Azure Monitor. However, if you have a lot of Azure resources and want to automate the Azure Monitor setup you may want to use a Resource Manager template, PowerShell, CLI, or REST API. Also, if you want to manage access permissions to your monitoring settings and data look at the monitoring roles.

Product integrations

You may have the need to consume Azure Monitor data but want to analyze it in in your favorite monitoring tool. This is where the product integrations come into play – you can route the Azure Monitor data to the tool of your choice in near real-time. Azure Monitor enables you to easily stream metrics and diagnostic logs to OMS Log Analytics to perform custom log search and advanced alerting on the data across resources and subscriptions. Azure Monitor metrics and logs for Web Sites and VMs can be easily routed to Visual Studio Application Insights, unlocking deep application performance management within the Azure portal.

The product integrations go beyond what you see in the portal. Our partners bring additional monitoring experiences, which you may wish to take advantage of. We are excited to share that there is a growing list of partner services available on Azure to best serve your needs. Please visit the supported product integrations list and give us feedback.

To wrap up, Azure Monitor helps you bring together the monitoring data from all your Azure resources and combine it with the monitoring tool of your choice to get a holistic view of your application. Here is a snapshot of a sample dashboard that we use to monitor one of our applications running on Azure. We are excited to launch Azure Monitor and looking forward to the dashboards that you build. Review the Azure Monitor documentation to get started and please keep the feedback coming.