KodeKloud Notes

Azure dashboards provide a unified, interactive interface to monitor performance, utilization, and health metrics across your Azure infrastructure. By aggregating data from Azure services and external sources, these customizable dashboards help DevOps teams gain actionable insights, optimize costs, and accelerate troubleshooting.

The image is an introduction to Azure Dashboards, highlighting their use as interactive data visualization tools for creating customized dashboards to monitor and analyze data from Azure services. It includes a graphic of a laptop displaying various data visualization elements.

Key Features

Note

Azure dashboards can be tailored to any team’s workflow. Use drag-and-drop tiles, custom queries, and built-in or third-party charts to surface the data that matters most.

Feature	Description
Centralized Monitoring	Aggregate metrics and logs from all subscriptions and resource groups in one view.
Customizable Layouts	Design dashboards with drag-and-drop tiles, grids, and theme settings.
Integrated Data Sources	Connect to Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Application Insights, and external APIs.
Sharing and Collaboration	Grant roles or share read-only links to co-author and review dashboards.
Automation and Scripting	Deploy templates (ARM, Bicep) or call REST APIs to create/update dashboards at scale.

The image is an introduction to Azure Dashboards, highlighting five features: Centralized Monitoring, Customizable Layouts, Integrated Data Sources, Sharing and Collaboration, and Automation and Scripting.

Common Use Cases

Use Case	Description
CI/CD Pipeline Monitoring	Track build statuses, deployment stages, and failure rates across DevOps pipelines.
Application Performance	Visualize response times, throughput, error rates, and dependency calls in real time.
Infrastructure Health Tracking	Monitor VM availability, App Service metrics, database DTU usage, and storage IOPS.
Service-Level Reporting	Display KPIs such as deployment frequency, mean time to recovery (MTTR), and uptime percentages.
Stakeholder Dashboards	Share executive summaries with interactive charts and KPI tiles for business stakeholders.

Integration with Azure Monitor and Log Analytics

Azure dashboards seamlessly integrate with Azure Monitor and Log Analytics to form a complete observability solution:

Collect metrics, activity logs, and custom telemetry across your cloud estate.
Run Kusto Query Language (KQL) queries to filter, aggregate, and correlate log data.
Pin chart and grid visualizations directly from Log Analytics or Application Insights.

The image shows an Azure dashboard for monitoring, featuring various charts and graphs displaying data related to work assignments, build health, team velocity, and test cases.

Best Practices

Design for Clarity
Organize tiles by priority and group related metrics together.
Select Actionable Metrics
Surface only the data points that drive decisions or indicate anomalies.
Integrate Diverse Data Sources
Combine infrastructure, application, and security logs for a holistic view.
Enforce Role-Based Access Controls
Apply least-privilege permissions to protect sensitive dashboards.
Warning
Grant “Contributor” access only to trusted team members. Public dashboard links expose read-only data but should still be shared judiciously.
Encourage Collaboration
Leverage comments, annotations, and versioned templates so that teams can iterate on dashboard designs.

The image lists five best practices for dashboards: design, metric selection, data sources, access controls, and sharing, each in a colored bar.

Azure dashboards empower teams to monitor, analyze, and optimize cloud resources within a single pane of glass. By leveraging customization, automation, and deep integration with Azure Monitor and Log Analytics, you can accelerate troubleshooting, improve governance, and drive continuous improvement across your Azure environment.

Links and References

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