Azure Dashboard Examples for Efficient Resource Management

Having a well-designed Azure dashboard is crucial for efficient resource management. A dashboard with a clear layout can help you quickly identify potential issues and make data-driven decisions.

Azure dashboards can be customized to display a variety of metrics, including CPU usage, memory usage, and storage capacity. This allows you to monitor your resources in real-time.

By regularly reviewing your dashboard, you can catch issues before they become major problems. For instance, if your CPU usage is consistently high, you may need to scale up your resources or optimize your workload.

Azure dashboards can also be used to set up alerts and notifications for when certain thresholds are reached. This ensures that you're always aware of potential issues, even when you're not actively monitoring your resources.

Azure Dashboard Components are highly customizable, allowing teams to tailor their dashboards to meet their specific needs. Each team can add and configure multiple dashboards to share information, view status, progress, and trends, and access quick links and other functions.

Dashboards can be easily configured to display a wide range of charts and widgets, making it simple to show recent changes made to view build status, bug trends, and more. You can add and rearrange widgets on the dashboard as needed.

Some of the widgets available include Analytics, Build, Project, Release, Team, and Teams, which can be used to display various types of data. Here are some examples of widgets that support specific services:

The Compute section of your Azure dashboard provides a clear overview of your Virtual Machines (VMs) current status and a count of VMs by size at the top.

You'll notice a breakdown of your VMs' status, which gives you a quick glance at what's going on with your virtual infrastructure.

Compute also shows the networking details of your VMs, including both Private IP and Public IP addresses.

This information is essential for troubleshooting and managing your VMs, and it's great for keeping track of your virtual resources.

By having this information at your fingertips, you can quickly identify any issues or areas that need attention.

Widgets are a crucial part of Azure dashboards, allowing you to display a wide range of information and charts. You can add widgets to a dashboard to show various types of data, including charts, information, and links.

Most widgets are configurable, which means you can tailor them to your specific needs. For example, you can select the project and team when configuring the Project widget.

Widgets can be categorized into different types, including Analytics, Build, Project, Release, Team, and User. Each type of widget is designed to display specific data, such as build pipeline data or team information.

Here are some examples of widgets that support specific services:

You can also find additional widgets in the Marketplace, or create your own widget using the REST API.

The Azure Inventory Dashboard is a detailed view of your Azure environment, but it's not 100% comprehensive. If you find some resources missing, you can contribute to the open-source project on GitHub by adding them with a pull request.

This dashboard can be customized and edited, and there will be a subsequent blog post on how to do it.

You can also view Azure DevOps data through the web portal, which provides features like dashboards, charts, widgets, and in-context reports. These reports support specific services like team velocity, sprint burndown, and Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD).

Here are some key features of the web portal data views and reports:

Power BI reports also allow users to create rich, customized reports using OData queries of Analytics data and the returned JSON data.

One of the challenges of creating an inventory dashboard is deciding where to place resources.

Having a dedicated tab for PaaS resources is a good solution, as it allows for easy organization and categorization.

You can have sub tabs under each PaaS resource tab to further break down the information.

Starting the summary below the sub tabs helps to create a clear and concise overview.

This approach makes it easier to scan and understand the data, especially when dealing with a large amount of information.

The Inventory Dashboard is a game-changer for getting a detailed view of your Azure environment.

This workbook is a result of extensive effort, taking a significant amount of time to create, but it's now available for others to contribute to and build upon.

Open source and GitHub make it possible for anyone to add their own resources that aren't already included in the workbook.

If you find that your resources aren't being collected, you can make a pull request to help the community and the author.

The author plans to follow up with a blog post on how to edit and design such workbooks.

Data Views and Reports are essential tools for tracking progress and identifying trends in your projects. You can view Azure DevOps data through the web portal, which offers a range of features to help you stay on top of your work.

Dashboards are customizable interactive signboards that provide real-time information, displaying configurable charts and widgets. You can add widgets provided through Azure DevOps Marketplace to your dashboards.

In-context reports are system-generated charts that support specific services, such as team velocity, sprint burndown, and Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD). These reports are displayed on the Analytics tab for a specific service and derive data from Analytics.

You can also use Power BI reports to create rich, customized reports using OData queries of Analytics data and the returned JSON data. Power BI reports allow users to create reports based on Analytics data for Azure Boards data.

In-context reports are available for Azure Boards, Pipelines, and Test. For example, you can view the Cumulative Flow Diagram and team Velocity reports from your backlog or board, or view the Sprint Burndown Trend from a Sprint backlog.

Some in-context reports provide interactive controls to provide each user the view of interest to them. You can add these reports to a dashboard by using the copy to dashboard option from the report's context menu.

The following in-context reports are available for Azure Pipelines:

These reports provide insights into pipeline and test data, such as pipeline pass rate, test pass rate, and pipeline duration. You can also use Power BI and OData to create reports based on pipeline and test data.

Azure Advisor is a personalized cloud consultant that helps you follow best practices to optimize your Azure deployments.

It analyzes your resource configuration and usage telemetry to provide recommendations. These recommendations can help improve the cost-effectiveness of your Azure resources.

Azure Advisor specifically looks at four key areas: cost-effectiveness, performance, high availability, and security. It then provides tailored suggestions to help you achieve these goals.

By leveraging Azure Advisor, you can make data-driven decisions to optimize your Azure resources and reduce costs.