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As an Azure administrator, there are too many moving parts for you to manage things manually. With this in mind, what sort of automation tools do you need to do your job...
There are hundreds of Azure management tools, each of which has a particular use case and overhead for operating. In this blog post, we are going to look at the types of tools available and the areas that you need to cover for a complete cloud management solution.
Generally, the tools available fall into three categories:
- Native Azure management tools - Provided by Microsoft and configurable on your Azure environment (E.g. Azure cost manager)
- Paid Azure tools - Usually software as a service (SaaS) and available on a number of different models from one-off fees to microtransactions to monthly fees
- Open-source Azure tools - Usually these cover other cloud providers as well as Azure but require you to set up and manage them, on the flip side they are generally free of charge
Whichever type of Azure tool you select, you will need a number of them to cover all the areas you need. Also, if you are running multiple subscriptions with different public cloud providers then the tools you select need to work with all of them or you need multiple sets of tools.
When you start to consider the areas you need these Azure tools to cover for your cloud management this starts to look like a larger and larger set of tools. At a minimum, you will need Azure tools for monitoring, configuration management, security and cost management.
You also need to consider if you will need professional services like Azure support or consultancy to iron out things like architecture or deployment.
Once you have mapped out everything you need, both people and tools, you might then start to compare that to a managed cloud management service which includes all of these elements and is turn-key.
As a Microsoft Azure partner IG CloudOps has been working with the cloud since 2010 and provides CloudOps for cloud management which includes all the elements above along with support and advisory bolt-on services.
CloudOps provides a single cloud management portal bringing together a best-of-breed set of Azure management tools. You don't have to select, learn, set up and maintain these tools, all of this is done for you and you get the value from day one. To find out how CloudOps can be part of a NoOps approach read our article here.
Some of the core tools included in CloudOps are:
- Prometheus (monitoring and alerting toolkit)
- Salstack (SecOps IT automation & orchestration)
- Jenkins (Automation)
- Zabbix (Monitoring)
- For a full list of them and what functionality they have see the details here
So instead of running multiple projects and Azure management tools, why not get an integrated solution and get the benefit of all the elements in one go?
