Azure Advisor Test

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 and then recommends solutions that can help you improve the cost effectiveness, performance, Reliability (formerly called High availability), and security of your Azure resources.

Cloud operators/consumers constantly endeavour to improve operational efficiency and optimize cloud costs. Therefore, they welcome suggestions from experts that can help them achieve these goals. The Azure Advisor test is that expert!

This test alerts administrators to high, medium, and low impact recommendations that Azure Advisor periodically provides under each of the following categories:

Reliability: To ensure and improve the continuity of your business-critical applications.
Security: To detect threats and vulnerabilities that might lead to security breaches.
Performance: To improve the speed of your applications.
Cost: To optimize and reduce your overall Azure spending.
Operational Excellence: To help you achieve process and workflow efficiency, resource manageability and deployment best practices.

Detailed diagnostics provide the details of these recommendations, and highlight the potential yearly savings that will accrue to you if you choose to act on these recommendations. The Advisor score is also reported, so you can quickly identify the category of recommendations that are not followed.

Target of the Test: A Microsoft Azure Subscription

Agent deploying the test: A remote agent

Output of the test: One set of results for each type/category of recommendation

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameters	Description
Test Period	How often should the test be executed.
Host	The host for which the test is to be configured.
Subscription ID	Specify the GUID which uniquely identifies the Microsoft Azure Subscription to be monitored. To know the ID that maps to the target subscription, do the following: Login to the Microsoft Azure Portal. When the portal opens, click on the Subscriptions option (as indicated by Figure 1). Figure 1 : Clicking on the Subscriptions option Figure 2 that appears next will list all the subscriptions that have been configured for the target Azure AD tenant. Locate the subscription that is being monitored in the list, and check the value displayed for that subscription in the Subscription ID column. Figure 2 : Determining the Subscription ID Copy the Subscription ID in Figure 2 to the text box corresponding to the SUBSCRIPTION ID parameter in the test configuration page.
Tenant ID	Specify the Directory ID of the Azure AD tenant to which the target subscription belongs. To know how to determine the Directory ID, refer to Configuring the eG Agent to Monitor a Microsoft Azure Subscription Using Azure ARM REST API.
Client ID, Client Password, and Confirm Password	To connect to the target subscription, the eG agent requires an Access token in the form of an Application ID and the client secret value. For this purpose, you should register a new application with the Azure AD tenant. To know how to create such an application and determine its Application ID and client secret, refer to Configuring the eG Agent to Monitor a Microsoft Azure Subscription Using Azure ARM REST API. Specify the Application ID of the created Application in the Client ID text box and the client secret value in the Client Password text box. Confirm the Client Password by retyping it in the Confirm Password text box.
Proxy Host and Proxy Port	In some environments, all communication with the Azure cloud be routed through a proxy server. In such environments, you should make sure that the eG agent connects to the cloud via the proxy server and collects metrics. To enable metrics collection via a proxy, specify the IP address of the proxy server and the port at which the server listens against the Proxy Host and Proxy Port parameters. By default, these parameters are set to none, indicating that the eG agent is not configured to communicate via a proxy, by default.
Proxy Username, Proxy Password and Confirm Password	If the proxy server requires authentication, then, specify a valid proxy user name and password in the Proxy Username and Proxy Password parameters, respectively. Then, confirm the password by retyping it in the Confirm Password text box.
Log Analytics Workspace Name	By default, this test monitors all log analytics workspaces. This is why, this parameter is set to all by default. If you want only specific log analytics workspaces to be monitored, then, you can specify these workspace names as a comma-separated list.
DD Frequency	Refers to the frequency with which detailed diagnosis measures are to be generated for this test. The default is 1:1. This indicates that, by default, detailed measures will be generated every time this test runs, and also every time the test detects a problem. You can modify this frequency, if you so desire. Also, if you intend to disable the detailed diagnosis capability for this test, you can do so by specifying none against DD frequency.
Detailed Diagnosis	To make diagnosis more efficient and accurate, the eG Enterprise embeds an optional detailed diagnostic capability. With this capability, the eG agents can be configured to run detailed, more elaborate tests as and when specific problems are detected. To enable the detailed diagnosis capability of this test for a particular server, choose the On option. To disable the capability, click on the Off option. The option to selectively enable/disable the detailed diagnosis capability will be available only if the following conditions are fulfilled: The eG manager license should allow the detailed diagnosis capability Both the normal and abnormal frequencies configured for the detailed diagnosis measures should not be 0.

Measures made by the test:
Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
High impact	Indicates the number of high impact recommendations of this type/category.	Number	Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to view the recommendations and the earnings that will potentially result from applying those recommendations.
Medium impact	Indicates the number of medium impact recommendations of this type/category.	Number	Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to view the recommendations and the earnings that will potentially result from applying those recommendations.
Low impact	Indicates the number of low impact recommendations of this type/category.	Number	Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to view the recommendations and the earnings that will potentially result from applying those recommendations.
Total recommendations	Indicates the total number of recommendations of this type.	Number
Total impacted resources	Indicates the total number of resources impacted by recommendations of this type.	Number
Annual savings amount	Indicates the amount of savings that will result annually from acting on recommendations of this type.	USD	Compare the value of this measure across categories to know which type of recommendation will result in the maximum annual savings.
Advisor score			Azure Advisor Score is a measurement of the optimization posture of your Azure resources based on Azure best practices. Advisor Score helps you: Understand the current state of your optimization posture. Improve your optimization posture by prioritizing which recommendations to remediate first. Report on your optimization progress over time. Advisor Score is calculated on a scale from 0% - 100% in aggregate and for each of the five Advisor categories. A score of 100% means all your resources tracked by Advisor follow all the best practices recommended in Advisor. A score of 0% means that none of your resources follow the recommended best practices. Advisor Score weighs all resources those with and without active recommendations by their individual cost relative to your total spend. This builds on the assumption that the resources which consume a greater share of your total investment in Azure are more critical to your workloads. Advisor Score also adds weight to resources with longstanding recommendations. You can use the value of this measure to identify the category where most of the recommendations are not followed. Immediate action may have to be initiated on such recommendations before they impact costs.