What are the best tools for monitoring and optimizing your cloud resources?

Meiner Erfahrung nach sollten neben technischen Metriken (wie CPU- oder Memory-Auslastung) auch Gesch?ftsmetriken (Anzahl der Abonnenten, Anzahl der gleichzeitigen Nutzer) erfasst und ausgewertet werden. Aus technischen Metriken k?nnen oft nur im Zusammenhang mit gesch?ftlichen Kennzahlen sinnvolle Ma?nahmen abgeleitet werden. Andernfalls kann dies zu einer überteuerten Cloud-Nutzung und niedrigerer Umsatzrendite führen. Angenommen, die kostenlose Variante einer ?ffentlichen API hat eine hohe Serverauslastung. Aus rein technischer Betrachtung k?nnte eine Skalierung naheliegend sein. Durch gesch?ftliche Metriken kann hier ein Kontext geschaffen werden: Somit k?nnte ein Rate-Limit für die kostenlose API sinnvoller sein.

In my experience monitoring cloud resources from a cost and availability perspective is crucial if we are to optimise the resources. I believe there are lot of options available in the market not to forget the cloud native logging and monitoring capabilities by AWS , AZURE & GCP. In my experience dynatrace or data dog or new relic and Splunk are some of the few monitoring tools that provide plethora of data for monitoring , cost optimisation and proactive responses.

Setting up a holistic monitoring solution is key for the current landscape, where resources might reside on multiple tenants, Private clouds and hyperscalers e.g. New Relic, Dynatrace. Yet Cost is always a challenge in trade of managing open source solutions such as ELK, Prometheous and Grafana. Starting with afordable and manageable solution throughout the Cloud journey while keep adapting to the new demands what really pays off eventually. Just remain aligned with your organization mission and Cloud strategy!

For cost optimization, tools like AWS Cost Explorer, Azure Cost Management, and Google Cloud Cost Management are vital. They offer insights into spending patterns, resource usage, and recommendations for optimization. Understanding resource sizing is crucial; analyzing metrics like CPU, memory, and storage helps rightsize instances and volumes. Selecting appropriate instance types and storage options based on workload requirements prevents over-provisioning. Auto-scaling adjusts resources dynamically, optimizing costs by paying only for what's used.

Azure Monitor: This service provides comprehensive capabilities for collecting, analyzing, and acting on telemetry from your cloud and on-premises environments. It helps you monitor the health and performance of your applications and services by gathering metrics and logs from various sources including VMs, databases, and applications. Azure Monitor integrates with other Azure services like Application Insights and Log Analytics, providing a unified platform for operational intelligence. This integration allows you to create complex queries, set up dashboards, and get insights into your application's performance and usage patterns.

Monitoring is one way through which we can manage our resources, it helps us to identify the unutilized resources or resource utilization capacity. These metrics can play a key role in cost optimization for any organization. For Example, with the help of Cloud Ops Agent, we can monitor and log different error messages in the Google Cloud Platform, which helps the development team debug the issues quickly. We can also Integrate log messages with cloud functions so that instead of receiving them on the console they are received through email or text messages.

By setting up alerts in Azure Monitor, you can receive notifications about critical conditions within your Azure environment that could affect performance or availability. These alerts can be based on metrics or logs, and can trigger automated actions like scaling, webhooks, emails, or running Azure Automation runbooks. This feature is crucial for maintaining operational health and avoiding service disruptions or performance degradation.

Cloud monitoring is the practice of measuring, monitoring, and managing workloads inside cloud infrastructure against specific metrics. Logging helps us debug the flow of the application and display different level of alert messages. Warn, Info, Error are a few examples of different level of alert messages. Example - AWS CloudWatch is a service provided by AWS thats helps us monitor resources, generate logs, Display metrics, set up alarm conditions.

Constantly reacting to alerts, many of which are false alarms, is draining for engineers monitoring systems. Using automation and AI so that systems can be as close to autonomous as possible while remaining as safe as possible is the best path ahead.

Azure Cost Management and Billing helps you understand your cloud spend and manage your budget with sophisticated tools for cost analysis and optimization. - ?? Cost Analysis: Track your spending over time to understand your costs and drive accountability across your organization. - ?? Budgets and Alerts: Create and manage budgets for the resources you use or subscribe to and get alerts as you approach your budget limit.

Cost management in the cloud involves utilizing tools like cost explorers, forecasting tools, and monitoring solutions to optimize spending. Cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and GCP offer native cost management tools that provide insights into usage patterns, cost forecasts, and anomaly detection. Integration with third-party tools or native tools like AWS Cost Explorer or GCP Cost Explorer enhances cost visibility and control. These tools enable tracking resource utilization, identifying underutilized or idle resources, and detecting anomalies that lead to cost spikes. Designing infrastructure with rightsized resources also ensures optimal resource allocation, preventing over-provisioning and unnecessary costs

There is no one size fits all approach you can take w.r.t cost management tools. It depends on what featuresets appeal more to you and what's the ROI you can get from investing in that particular tool. If a customer's infra is hosted on only single cloud, using a native tool ij conjunction with a BI tool (e.g. Power BI) for cost visibility and analysis makes more sense. However, if you want to combine cloud cost management along with SaaS license management tools like Flexera makes more sense as it as the capability for Software Asset Management along with FinOps.

This feature enables you to track cloud spending with detailed reporting and analytics tools. It not only allows you to view historical data but also forecasts future expenditures. Budgets can be set and alerts can be configured to notify when spending approaches or exceeds these thresholds. Azure Cost Management also integrates with Azure Advisor, providing recommendations for optimizing resource deployment, resizing or shutting down underutilized resources, and purchasing reserved instances to save costs.

Automation Scripts are one way organizations can achieve ease of provisioning resources, thereby reducing the IT team's efforts to approve the resource. With the help of Infrastructure as a Code it becomes consistent, repeatable routines for provisioning and changing systems and their configuration.Since the design of the application keeps on changing, making a change to an existing infrastructure can be easy and cheap.

Azure Automation allows you to automate repetitive tasks across Azure and non-Azure environments, saving time and reducing the possibility of human error. ARM templates are a declarative way of defining your infrastructure, enabling consistent deployments across different environments. This infrastructure-as-code approach promotes DevOps practices, making it easier to manage production, testing, and development environments in a repeatable and predictable manner.

The focus of cloud optimization will shift over the next 5 years from automation scripts to autonomous workload optimization in which AI will take on the role of configuring apps for the best cost, performance and availability. Unlike static automation scripts, AI is able to learn over time with reinforcement learning and adjust configurations based on app production behavior. Gartner has projected that by 2026, the share of organizations performing real-time cost or performance optimization of cloud-based workloads will rise from less than 20% in 2022 to 50%.

There are some new tools on the market, that actually drive automated changes which don't break your IaC, which is a common issue. Many tools will say they avoid touching the terraform code etc, but having something that interacts with engineers and supports them with their code changes is the most successful way forward.

Quando se fala em observabilidade de forma mais ampla, entendo que existem três a quatro ferramentas que disputam muito bem este espa?o, s?o capazes de entregar uma ótima qualidade cobrindo bem as capacidades mínimas de observabilidade que toda boa ferramenta deve ter. No entanto, quando o objetivo é entender e verificar diferencial de entrega de valor, minha ferramenta preferida é o DataDog sem dúvida alguma, preciso, rápido, fácil de usa, intuituvo e flexivel. Tem uma ótima documenta??o e um suporte incrível!

Azure SQL Performance Insight offers in-depth monitoring and performance tuning capabilities for Azure SQL databases. It provides detailed views into query execution, indexing issues, and resource bottlenecks. Application Insights, on the other hand, is an extensible Application Performance Management (APM) service for developers, helping to monitor live applications. It automatically detects performance anomalies, and it uses powerful analytics tools to help you understand what is happening in your application and to diagnose issues.

While there are “no regrets” moves in which performance gains can be had for low effort/cost there comes a point at which an understanding of how the customer values performance is needed to make an effective trade off e.g., if it would cost $1m to reduce latency by 10ms, this could be poor ROI in say b2b SaaS as the end user may not notice, but high ROI for a high volume quantitative trading fund as the time advantage helps them execute trades ahead of rival traders.

For cloud resource optimization, tools that conduct compliance checks are indispensable. They scan for vulnerabilities, ensuring adherence to standards and regulations. Such tools offer detailed reports and insights, aiding in addressing compliance gaps. Maintaining compliance safeguards data and fosters customer trust by upholding security and privacy standards. The best tools automate these checks, providing continuous assurance without manual intervention.

Azure Site Recovery: This service ensures business continuity by enabling automated replication of virtual machines, providing failover capabilities to a secondary location, and orchestrating recovery to keep applications available during planned and unplanned outages. Scalability and Elasticity with Auto Scale and VM Scale Sets: Azure's scalability features allow your applications to perform optimally under varying load conditions. Auto Scale automatically adjusts resources based on real-time demand, and VM Scale Sets allow you to create and manage a group of load balanced VMs.

Monitoring and optimizing cloud resources are crucial for improving operational efficiency and driving business impact. For both C-level executives and engineers, using tools such as Prometheus for detailed tracking and Grafana for visualization can provide valuable insights into resource usage and system performance. When used with Kubernetes, these tools can automate deployment and scaling, significantly improving agility. Leadership must prioritize continuous learning and encourage a culture of leveraging cutting-edge tools. By aligning technical capabilities with business objectives, companies can achieve sustainable growth and maintain a competitive edge.

Criteria for Selecting the Right Tool Integration with Cloud Providers: Ensure the tool integrates seamlessly with your cloud provider (AWS, Azure, GCP). Scalability: The tool should handle your current load and scale as your cloud infrastructure grows. Ease of Use: Look for user-friendly interfaces and intuitive dashboards to simplify monitoring and optimization tasks. Customization: The ability to customize dashboards, alerts, and reports to fit your specific needs is crucial. Cost: Consider the cost of the tool and ensure it fits within your budget, especially if your cloud environment is expected to grow. Support and Community: Strong customer support and an active user community can be very helpful for troubleshooting.