Query Azure Resource Graph from Azure Monitor
Azure Monitor now lets you query data in Azure Resource Graph from your Log Analytics workspace. You can utilize this feature to make your Azure Log Analytics queries aware of your resource’s properties such as tags, resource attributes and much more. You can run cross-service queries by using any client tools that support Kusto Query Language (KQL) queries, including the Log Analytics web UI, workbooks, PowerShell, and the REST API. Read more here
Log Analytics results upgrade
Log Analytics team has shipped one of it's most significant updates to date - a new and upgraded results set grid. The new results set boasts a brand new experience and designed aimed at empowering Log Analytics users to do more with Logs. The new result set introduces numerous new features and improvements and is designed to be more accessible and easy to use. Users can now use on grid filters, drag and drop actions and even Pivot mode to easily analyze their query results with no KQL knowledge needed.Announcing new management, security, and monitoring capabilities in Windows Virtual Desktop
With the global pandemic, we are seeing increasing demand for technologies that enable remote work. We’ve seen significant growth in the use of Windows Virtual Desktop, as organizations use it to ensure that their employees have access to the desktops and tools they need to stay productive. To help customers continue to accelerate this move to secure remote work with Windows Virtual Desktop, we are announcing several new capabilities that make it even easier to deploy, secure, and scale your virtual desktop deployments. These new capabilities will be available in public preview by the end of the calendar year 2020. Before we dive into the new capabilities, we want to take a moment to share some of the experiences of our customers. Sebastian Meyer, the Global Service Owner for Modern Client Technologies at Beiersdorf Shared Services, shared his thoughts in moving to Windows Virtual Desktop to modernize his virtual desktop infrastructure. "What Microsoft has developed here is simply phenomenal! Windows Virtual Desktop serves so many use cases and is very close to the end user. We were able to achieve maximum success with the project." You can read the full story here. Internally here at Microsoft, we are of course facing the same challenges as many of you. For example, getting a corporate laptop in the hands of new employees and interns takes time and impacts productivity. Windows Virtual Desktop is helping our new hires by providing a secure and productive remote work experience with access to the apps they need to get working immediately: “Windows Virtual Desktop allows you to create virtual desktops that work just like a physical Windows PC would,” says Mark Lawrence, a senior program manager on Microsoft’s digital security team. “That means the people who use one—new hires, interns, and so on—get access to the Windows Start menu, with Microsoft’s productivity applications, the Microsoft Edge browser, and everything else they would need to work at any location. No more waiting for a physical device delivery.” You can read the full story here. Simplified Management With Windows Virtual Desktop, you can move from a simple proof-of-concept (PoC) to a fully operational environment faster than ever before. As you start to scale your deployment, here are some new capabilities that will help you manage and operate your deployment efficiently. Microsoft Endpoint Manager integration Microsoft Endpoint Manager allows you to manage policies and distribute applications across devices. You can now enroll Windows Virtual Desktop virtual machines that are hybrid Azure Active Directory domain-joined (joined to your on-premises Active Directory and registered with your Azure Active Directory) with Microsoft Intune and manage them in the Microsoft Endpoint Manager admin center the same way as physical devices. This simplifies management, provides a centralized view across both physical devices and virtual desktops, and creates new areas of collaboration. The Microsoft Endpoint Manager integration is generally available for Windows 10 Enterprise desktops - you can learn more in the public FAQ. The public preview for Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session will be available in the coming months and will initially support policies at the device level. MSIX app attach in Azure portal MSIX app attach is an application layering solution that allows you to dynamically attach an application (that is an MSIX package) to a user session. Separating out the application from the operating system makes it easier to create a golden virtual machine image, and you get more control with providing the right application for the right user. Previously, you had to use PowerShell scripts to enable MSIX app attach. We will be integrating the app attach capability in the Azure portal and Azure Resource Manager. This will eliminate the need for custom scripts and makes it possible to publish your packaged applications to application groups with a few clicks. MSIX package from Azure portal Proactive Monitoring Proactively monitoring your deployment is important to ensure your deployment is always up and running and your employees have an optimal experience using virtual desktops. Azure Monitor workbook Azure Monitor workbook for Windows Virtual Desktop aims to provide you all the monitoring telemetry and visualizations you need to debug and troubleshoot issues. You can configure alerts to proactively identify issues before they impact your employees. You can look at connection and host level performance and also drill down to specific user session to see if there are any issues. You can also look at usage across host pools and make sure you are optimizing for cost and performance. Improved Security With Windows Virtual Desktop, you can use security capabilities such as Azure encryption, Azure Firewall, Azure Security Center, and Microsoft Defender to secure your entire VDI infrastructure and ensure that your corporate and customer data is protected and stored securely. We continue to add additional security capabilities: Screen capture protection One common attack vector with remote sessions is screen capture. To protect your sensitive information, we are adding the option to disable screen capture for your remote apps and desktop on all the supported Windows Virtual Desktop clients. Direct RDP to session host We are introducing a new capability that can be set at a host pool level and will take into account the type of network you are connecting from, and when possible, establish a direct peer-to-peer UDP connection to the session host rather than over the internal Windows Virtual Desktop gateways. By eliminating the intermediate hops and using a more efficient connection over a trusted network, you get a secure optimized experience with lesser connection latency and better performance. Thank you again for the amazing feedback that you have provided to us. You can track the progress of these upcoming public previews in our roadmap page. If you are attending Microsoft Ignite conference, you can learn more about these features and get your questions answered in our sessions and you can always reach us anytime at the Windows Virtual Desktop Tech Community page. You can also register here to attend our upcoming webinars.
Announcing the Public Preview of Azure Monitor health models
Troubleshooting modern cloud-native workloads has become increasingly complex. As applications scale across distributed services and regions, pinpointing the root cause of performance degradation or outages often requires navigating a maze of disconnected signals, metrics, and alerts. This fragmented experience slows down troubleshooting and burdens engineering teams with manual correlation work. We address these challenges by introducing a unified, intelligent concept of workload health that’s enriched with application context. Health models streamline how you monitor, assess, and respond to issues affecting your workloads. Built on Azure service groups, they provide an out-of-the-box model tailored to your environment, consolidate signals to reduce alert noise, and surface actionable insights — all designed to accelerate detection, diagnosis, and resolution across your Azure landscape. Overview Azure Monitor health models enable customers to monitor the health of their applications with ease and confidence. These models use the Azure-wide workload concept of service groups to infer the scope of workloads and provide out-of-the-box health criteria based on platform metrics for Azure resources. Key Capabilities Out-of-the-Box Health Model Customers often struggle with defining and monitoring the health of their workloads due to the variability of metrics across different Azure resources. Azure Monitor health models provide a simplified out-of-the-box health experience built using Azure service group membership. Customers can define the scope of their workload using service groups and receive default health criteria based on platform metrics. This includes recommended alert rules for various Azure resources, ensuring comprehensive monitoring coverage. Improved Detection of Workload Issues Isolating the root cause of workload issues can be time-consuming and challenging, especially when dealing with multiple signals from various resources. The health model aggregates health signals across the model to generate a single health notification, helping customers isolate the type of signal that became unhealthy. This enables quick identification of whether the issue is related to backend services or user-centric signals. Quick Impact Assessment Assessing the impact of workload issues across different regions and resources can be complex and slow, leading to delayed responses and prolonged downtime. The health model provides insights into which Azure resources or components have become unhealthy, which regions are affected, and the duration of the impact based on health history. This allows customers to quickly assess the scope and severity of issues within the workload. Localize the Issue Identifying the specific signals and resources that triggered a health state change can be difficult, leading to inefficient troubleshooting and resolution processes. Health models inform customers which signals triggered the health state change, and which service group members were affected. This enables quick isolation of the trouble source and notifies the relevant team, streamlining the troubleshooting process. Customizable Health Criteria for Bespoke Workloads Many organizations operate complex, bespoke workloads that require their own specific health definitions. Relying solely on default platform metrics can lead to blind spots or false positives, making it difficult to accurately assess the true health of these custom applications. Azure Monitor health models allow customers to tailor health assessments by adding custom health signals. These signals can be sourced from Azure Monitor data such as Application Insights, Managed Prometheus, and Log Analytics. This flexibility empowers teams to tune the health model to reflect the unique characteristics and performance indicators of their workloads, ensuring more precise and actionable health insights. Getting Started Ready to simplify and accelerate how you monitor the health of your workloads? Getting started with Azure Monitor health models is easy — and during the public preview, it’s completely free to use. Pricing details will be shared ahead of general availability (GA), so you can plan with confidence. Start Monitoring in Minutes Define Your Service Group Create your service group and add the relevant resources as members to the service group. If you don’t yet have access to service groups, you can join here. Create Your Health Model In the Azure Portal navigate to Health Models and create your first model. You’ll get out-of-the-box health criteria automatically applied. Customize to Fit Your Needs In many cases the default health signals may suit your needs, but we support customization as well. Investigate and Act Use the health timeline and our alerting integration to quickly assess impact, isolate issues, and take action — all from a single pane of glass. You can access health models today in the Azure portal! For more details on how to get started with health models, please refer to our documentation. We Want to Hear From You Azure Monitor health models are built with our customers in mind — and your feedback is essential to shaping the future of this experience. Whether you're using the out-of-the-box health model or customizing it to fit your unique workloads, we want to know what’s working well and where we can improve. Share Your Feedback Use the “Give Feedback” feature directly within the Azure Monitor health models experience to send us your thoughts in context. Post your ideas in the Azure Monitor community. Prefer email? Reach out to us at azmonhealthmodels@service.microsoft.com — we’re listening. Your insights help us prioritize features, improve usability, and ensure Azure Monitor continues to meet the evolving needs of modern cloud-native operations.
