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In the previous blog post in this series, we introduced the analogy of building a Lego Tie Fighter and how that is like monitoring resources in Azure. In this blog post, we will introduce our own custom-built Tie Fighter that we call “EverWatch”.
Introducing EverWatch: Revolutionizing Resource Management
It is important to ensure that your systems run efficiently and cost-effectively. Quisitive’s EverWatch offers a cloud-based, modern approach to monitoring by providing comprehensive oversight of both Azure and on-premises resources using Microsoft Azure. EverWatch addresses many of the challenges of monitoring Azure resources, including:
- How can you tell if there are problems with your organization’s on-prem or Azure resources? Such as:
- Under-allocated resources, resulting in sluggish or unresponsive systems
- Over-allocated resources, resulting in overspending on Azure resources
- How can you tell if something truly strange is occurring in your environment? Are you monitoring all your important resources, or do you have blind spots in your monitoring?
What is the EverWatch Azure Monitoring Solution?
EverWatch is Quisitive’s proprietary monitoring solution and is part of a service that Quisitive provides called AMS (Azure Management Services), which provides operations, security, compliance, and automation. It leverages Azure Monitor for operational monitoring and provides key insights into customer environments. It integrates several key components, including:
EverWatch Architecture
At the heart of EverWatch is the Log Analytics workspace, which gathers monitoring data from Azure resources based on predefined policies. The rules engine performs core functions such as comparing data to rules, checking for duplicates, forwarding or suppressing alerts, and calculating anomaly scores.
Why EverWatch?
Many Azure monitoring solutions require that your logging data be sent outside of your Azure tenant. EverWatch keeps your data in your environment.
Quisitive knows that an Azure monitoring solution must be cost-effective, so EverWatch was designed to run in Azure at minimal cost and not incur the licensing commonly seen on competitive solutions.
EverWatch is designed to identify constrained and overallocated resources and detect anomalies in your environment. This cutting-edge capability ensures that your resources operate at peak efficiency, helping you stay ahead of the curve.
Visualizations
Quisitive’s monitoring team uses Grafana to visualize data for both the team and Azure Management Services customers. The screenshot below shows the top-level dashboard the team uses to monitor all EverWatch customers.
Quisitive also leverages Grafana to provide historical reporting for alerts, as shown in the graphic below. This showcases alert trends (increases or decreases), alerts over the last day, alert history, and alert breakdowns by alert type and severity.
In Grafana, individual alerts can then be drilled into to find more details about the root cause of the alert. In the screenshot below, we can see that for the current customer, there is one memory-bound VM and one disk-bound VM (these could be either Azure VMs or Arc-enabled machines running on-prem or in another cloud provider).
Going Beyond Monitoring
EverWatch goes beyond traditional monitoring by addressing key areas such as:
- Constrained Resources: Monitoring memory, disk, and CPU usage to ensure optimal performance.
- Over-allocated Resources: Identifying and addressing over-allocated resources to reduce costs.
- Anomaly Detection: Comparing expected behavior with actual behavior to detect significant changes in your environment.
In the next part of this series, we will show how we use EverWatch to monitor our customers’ environment.
Working with a Microsoft partner like Quisitive can help you automate, monitor, and continuously improve your Azure spend. IDC research shows CSP-managed customers save 20–40% on average.
See EverWatch in Action!
Watch an overview and demo of EverWatch, our proven Azure Monitoring solution, and learn how to save time, optimize resources, and reduce costs.
Check out the other blogs in this series:
- Part 1: 4 Lessons Legos Taught Me About Monitoring Azure
- Part 3: Inside the Cockpit: How Quisitive Operates the EverWatch Tie Fighter
Manage, monitor, and optimize your Azure environment without lifting a finger.
Quisitive is a proven Microsoft managed services partner. Connect with us today to learn more about how we can help maintain your Azure environment and optimize regularly for future growth.
