Forem: Sujitha Paduchuri

Azure database monitoring: Choosing the right tool in 2025

Sujitha Paduchuri — Fri, 23 May 2025 07:09:54 +0000

Azure databases play a major role in running cloud-native applications seamlessly by offering scalability, high availability, and easy management. But ensuring uninterrupted database operations needs real-time performance monitoring and code-deep insights.
Here’s what to consider when choosing an Azure database monitoring solution in 2025.

Why native monitoring doesn’t cut it:

Azure provides built-in tools like Azure Monitor, SQL Insights, and Log Analytics to monitor cloud services. But these native-cloud monitoring solutions come with certain limitations like:

Multiple interfaces: Admins will have to switch through different tools to monitor interconnected services.
Manual correlation: Troubleshooting requires manual performance analysis to map performance issues across interdependent services.
Complex setup: Some monitoring solutions might require additional integrations or third party deployments or KQL knowledge for full functionality.
Limited scope: Azure-native monitoring solutions cater to Azure-only environments, providing limited visibility into hybrid or multi-cloud environments.

This is why most organizations opt for dedicated cloud monitoring solutions that offer centralized visibility, smart root-cause analysis, and extensive cloud support.

What to look for in an Azure database monitoring tool?

Real-time monitoring:

Monitor uptime, memory usage, disk I/O, and network traffic in real time to identify potential issues before things go out of hand. Periodic performance analysis helps with trend analysis, capacity planning, and optimizing resource allocation.

Database-specific metric tracking:

Your Azure database monitoring solution should be able to monitor KPIs unique to each database engine; like SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, MySQL, MariaDB, Cosmos DB, etc.

Key metrics include:

Replication lag: High replication lag can lead to stale reads, impacting application performance and availability.
Request rate and throughput: These metrics help assess database load and ensure it can handle user demand without bottlenecks.
Deadlocks and blocked sessions: Deadlocks occur when concurrent transactions compete for the same resources, leading to transaction failures or delays. Monitoring deadlocks and blocked sessions helps you optimize query performance and avoid app crashes.
Query execution and wait time: Monitoring query performance, status, and wait time is important for identifying slow queries and optimizing database performance.

Smart alerting and anomaly detection:

Make sure that your database monitoring solution offers modern and proactive monitoring features. This helps you stay ahead of performance issues and speed up issue resolution. You should look for:

Configurable severity-based alerts: Severity-based alerts classify incidents and prioritize critical issues. This reduces alert noise and helps teams understand the urgency of incident resolution.
Automated responses and ticket assignment: Automating escalations and triggering responsive actions saves time and improves mean time to resolution. This enhances quicker issue fixes and seamless database operations.
AI/ML-driven anomaly detection: Leveraging AI and ML to identify performance anomalies help you understand the peak load times, correlate KPIs across multiple cloud deployments and fix potential issues before they can lead to operational challenges in Azure cloud.

Backup and Recovery monitoring:

Ensure that the tool offers monitoring services to track the health of Azure backup and recovery services. Ensure backup readiness and avoid data loss during outages or failures by keeping an eye on RPO and RTO.

Support for hybrid and multi-cloud environments:

Check if your monitoring tool provides visibility across on-premises, Azure, AWS, Google, Oracle, and other cloud platforms that constitute your cloud environment. Centralized monitoring helps you correlate data across environments and streamline performance analysis efficiently.

Cost and scalability:

Choose a tool that can scale with your infrastructure and offers transparent pricing. Optimize cloud costs by avoiding renewal for licenses you don’t need.

ManageEngine Applications Manager is one such tool that offers complete visibility into your Azure databases. It provides monitoring support for Azure database services like Azure SQL, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, and Cosmos DB. With extensive monitoring support for over 150 technologies, it centralizes infrastructure, cloud, and user experience monitoring. Download a 30-day free trial or book a demo to explore its full capabilities.

SSL Certificate Monitoring: Why it matters

Sujitha Paduchuri — Tue, 13 May 2025 06:15:47 +0000

Imagine trying to access your company's website only to be met with a browser warning: "Your connection is not private." The direct implication is an expired SSL/TLS certificate in the background. It is not just a humiliating mistake; it directly affects the security and legitimacy of your website. Secure internet communication is based on SSL/TLS certificates. They authenticate your domain and encrypt data sent between users and websites. They require maintenance, just like every other integral part of an IT ecosystem. Misconfigured or expired certificates can seriously harm operations and reputation if they are not properly monitored.

Here’s why SSL/TLS certificate monitoring is an essential part of your IT hygiene, not simply a nice-to-have.

Why monitor your SSL/TLS certificates?

When SSL/TLS certificates lapse or encounter configuration issues, the consequences extend far beyond a red lock icon.

Loss of security:

SSL certificates ensure encrypted communication between users and web applications. But when certificates expire, encryption might still work, yet authentication breaks down. This leaves your platform open to impersonation attacks, phishing attempts, and data interception.

Loss of trust:

Modern browsers are quick to flag expired or invalid certificates. Users are instantly met with security alerts that damage their experience and reduce traffic. Even a few minutes of downtime due to SSL errors can drive users away permanently.

Search engine penalties:

Google and other search engines treat SSL as a ranking factor. An invalid certificate won’t just scare off users, it’ll also drag down your SEO performance, costing you organic visibility.

Operational issues:

APIs and microservices depending on secure HTTPS connections can break without a valid certificate. These disruptions can cause cascading failures, from payment gateway issues to failed logins or third-party service breakdowns.

This is not simply a theory; actual businesses have suffered the impact of expired certifications. Consider Microsoft Teams, for instance. Many organizations had to temporarily suspend operations due to worldwide login difficulties caused by a forgotten certificate. After its domain was impacted by an expiring wildcard certificate, Spotify has also experienced an unplanned outage. And, although IT titans have the means to recover, the regular firm may not.

Do’s and Don’ts of SSL Monitoring

If you are serious about avoiding similar service disruptions, a little discipline can go a long way.

Do’s:

Keep track of certificate expiration dates on a regular basis. Reminders should be set up well in advance.
Verify that their Certificate Authority (CA) has not revoked your certificates.
Verify your root and intermediate certificates; broken chains are frequently the reason for failure.
Make sure that all of your TLS setups use robust ciphers and protocols.
Verify that each certificate corresponds to the domain for which it was issued.
Verify that the installation is successful on all necessary endpoints.

Don’ts:

Don't overlook expiry warnings—they are more than simply pop-ups; they're red flags.
Avoid using self-signed certificates for public-facing services. They are not trusted by most browsers.
Avoid using outdated protocols such as TLS 1.0 or 1.1. Outdated protocols are insecure.
Do not forget about wildcard or SAN certificates. Several services could stop working if one expires.
Do not disregard certificate pinning problems; they might cause your mobile or web apps to crash.
Never wait to revoke compromised certificates. A small key leak might have disastrous consequences.

Simplify SSL monitoring with the right tool

SSL certificate monitoring does not need to be tedious or error-prone. By monitoring certificate expiration, verifying issuer and recipient information, and looking for flaws in cipher suites and protocols, tools like ManageEngine Applications Manager simplify the procedure. You will always be ahead of any failures with automatic notifications for expiration or domain mismatches.

Try it for free for 30 days to get a personal look at worry-free SSL/TLS certificate monitoring.

Looking for cloud monitoring tools? Here's the drill.

Sujitha Paduchuri — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 12:04:51 +0000

As convenient as it is for development teams to work on cloud and hybrid cloud environments, complexity makes its way into the infrastructure through siloed components and interdependent layers of IT. Monitoring such infrastructure to the core helps the administrators get a clear view of their cloud and enhances cloud performance and IT efficiency.

What is cloud monitoring?

Cloud monitoring is the scrutiny of performance, availability, and security of cloud-based infrastructure, applications, and services in real time. It involves using dedicated tools to collect and analyze real-time data on resource usage, application performance, and potential security threats. Monitoring the cloud environment helps admins ensure that cloud environments operate efficiently by identifying and resolving issues promptly, and aids in optimizing costs and resource allocation.

Why get a dedicated tool to monitor cloud environments?

Cloud monitoring is a mandatory practice for any enterprise that is migrating to the cloud or adapting hybrid cloud technology. It takes a lot of time and expense to monitor an entire cloud ecosystem manually without any dedicated tool in hand, let alone a hybrid cloud. A cloud performance monitoring tool would help the IT team monitor the cloud to the last detail and analyze performance accurately.

How can a cloud performance monitoring tool make an admin's job easy?

A cloud performance monitoring tool can assist the admin team in numerous ways to improve cloud performance and enhance user experience. Here are a few of the benefits cloud monitoring tools can bring to the table:

Unified interface: While cloud services like AWS offer native monitoring interfaces, deploying a dedicated tool that supports monitoring for multiple technologies from different vendors is far more helpful for the admin teams. Such tools help administrators access and analyze performance data for every instance simultaneously from a centralized environment, enhancing management and enhancing operational efficiency.
Core-level visibility: A robust monitoring tool that can dive deep into the IT infrastructure brings even the smallest details into clear view for administrators. It uncovers hidden issues within the ecosystem—often referred to as "unknown unknowns"—which enhances observability. This deeper insight enables the IT team to make well-informed decisions and respond proactively to potential challenges.
Proactive management: Monitoring key performance metrics in real time and analyzing performance trends keep admins updated on the behavior of the cloud environment. This helps the IT team to identify potential threats and downtime beforehand, allowing them to take precautionary actions to avoid such interruptions to performance and availability of the cloud.
Cost control: Cloud services like AWS can be expensive. By monitoring resource usage patterns and correlating them with resource allocation with the help of a tool, IT teams can plan and reduce unnecessary spending and ensure cost-effectiveness.
Adaptable to dynamic infrastructure: Cloud infrastructures are designed for scalability, and performance monitoring tools help admins manage this effectively. The tools can trigger automated scaling actions based on predefined thresholds or performance patterns to accommodate fluctuating workloads.
Seamless user experience: Visibility into the cloud helps admins ensure a seamless and hassle-free user experience. This includes reducing response times, boosting cloud availability, improving application reliability, and delivering consistent performance to end-users.

How to get the most out of a cloud monitoring tool?

No matter how efficient of a performance monitoring tool you employ for your cloud infrastructure, you should know how to yield it. Here is a little head start on how to get the best performance out of your cloud with a monitoring tool.

Find a tool that doesn't need you memorizing command lines. CLI fits a limited cloud environment. Make sure the monitoring tool you choose is adaptable and extensible to meet your demands if you want it to handle an expanding cloud environment.
Make use of deep insights and visually represented analytics to identify possible bottlenecks and slowdowns in advance. Optimize and balance the load as needed.
Use code level analysis to identify and fix incorrect codes and challenging algorithms once and for all.
Administrators may view the entire infrastructure on a single screen thanks to dashboards. When optimized and sorted based on priority, dashboards can be a great medium to study and correlate metrics in order to map dependencies, which helps in planning for and improving overall cloud performance.
Classify alarms based on their level of severity and reduce alert noise. Configure adaptive thresholds for dynamic measurements to prevent false alerts. This makes it easy for the administration staff to prioritize issue resolution and act in time.
Use smart alerts to automate alert escalation based on severity. Depending on the severity of the alarm, configure response actions that need to be triggered. This takes half the workload and expense off the IT team.
Get the most out of KPI trend analyses and performance forecasting. Analyze the forecast reports and allocate resources effectively. Make well-informed decisions while planning capacity and costs.

Most importantly, find a tool that aligns with the dynamic nature and the size of your cloud architecture. Adapt a monitoring interface that would provide you with the features to monitor multiple services from different vendors. Make sure you are not involving any third party agents for integration, that they might open the doors to complexity and perplexity while monitoring numerous instances in real time.

ManageEngine's Applications Manager is one of the popular recommendations when there is a need for a cloud monitoring tool. It offers application performance monitoring and observability support for IT enterprises. All it needs is a one-time input for configuration, and one can monitor their instance at a go.

Along with cloud and hybrid cloud monitoring, the tool extends monitoring support to more than 150 technologies including VMs, ERPs, databases, load balancers web applications, web services and websites; needless of any external agents. Give the feature-rich catalogue a try by downloading a free trial and check if it suits your requirement.