Azure Virtual Machines Test

Azure Virtual Machines is one of several types of on-demand, scalable computing resources that Azure offers. An Azure virtual machine gives you the flexibility of virtualization without having to buy and maintain the physical hardware that runs the virtual machine.

Azure Virtual Machines lets you create and use virtual machines in the cloud. Providing what's known as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), virtual machine technology can be used in variety of ways. Some examples are:

Virtual machines (VMs) for development and test. Development groups commonly use VMs because they offer a quick, easy way to create a computer with specific configurations required to code and test an application. Azure Virtual Machines provides a straightforward and economical way to create these VMs, use them, then delete them when they're no longer needed.

Running applications in the cloud. It makes economic sense to run some applications in the public cloud. One example is an application that has large spikes in demand. Although you could equip your own data center with enough hardware to handle peak demand, that hardware might be underutilized much of the time. Running this application on Azure lets you pay for extra VMs only when you need them and shut them down when you don't. Or, suppose you're a start-up that needs on-demand computing resources quickly and with no commitment. Once again, Azure can be the right choice.

Extending your own datacenter into the public cloud. When you use Azure Virtual Network, your organization can create a virtual network (VNET) that's an extension of your own on-premises network and add VMs to that VNET. This allows running applications such as SharePoint, SQL Server and others on an Azure VM. This approach might be easier to deploy or less expensive than running them in VMs your own datacenter.

Disaster recovery. Rather than paying continuously for a backup datacenter that's rarely used, IaaS-based disaster recovery lets you pay for the computing resources you need only when you really need them. For example, if your primary datacenter goes down, you can create VMs running on Azure to run essential applications, then shut them down when they're no longer needed.

When multiple virtual machines are deployed through the Azure Resource Manager on the Azure cloud, administrators may often want to closely monitor the count of the VMs that are registered on the cloud and the VMs that were removed from the cloud. The Azure Virtual Machines test helps administrators in this regard.

This test auto-discovers the Azure subscriptions in a virtual environment and for each subscription, this test monitors the VMs that were deployed through the Azure Resource Manager and reports the numerical statistics of the VMs that were registered, added, removed, powered on and powered off etc.

Note:

The metrics of this test does not include the count of the virtual machines deployed using the Azure classic mode.

Target of the Test : Microsoft Azure

Agent deploying the test : A remote agent

Output of the test: One set of results for each subscription subscribed on the target Microsoft Azure being monitored

First level Descriptor: Subscription ID

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.
Tenant ID	Specify the Directory ID of the Azure Active Directory that is associated with the subscription of the target Microsoft Azure. To know how to determine the Directory ID, refer to Pre-Requisites for Monitoring Microsoft Azure (ARM).
Client ID and Client Password	The eG agent communicates with the target Microsoft Azure using JAVA API calls. To collect the required metrics, the eG agent requires an Access token in the form of an Application ID and the client secret value. To know more about determining the Application ID and the key refer to Broad Steps to Determine the Tenant ID and the Access Token. Specify the Application ID of the created Web Application in the Client ID text box and the client secret value in the Client Password text box.
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 reported by the test:

Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Registered VMs	Indicates the number of virtual machines that were currently registered on this cloud.	Number	The detailed diagnosis of this measure if enabled, lists the names of the virtual machines, the location of the virtual machine, the Public IP address, the Internal IP address and the Operating system of the virtual machine.
Poweredon VMs	Indicates the number of virtual machines that are currently powered on.	Number	The detailed diagnosis of this measure lists the name of the virtual machine, the location of the virtual machine, the Public IP address, the Internal IP address and the Operating system of the virtual machine.
Poweredoff VMs	Indicates the number of virtual machines that are currently powered off.	Number	The detailed diagnosis of this measure lists the name of the virtual machine, the location of the virtual machine, the Public IP address, the Internal IP address and the Operating system of the virtual machine.
Added VMs	Indicates the number of virtual machines that were newly added to the cloud during the last measurement period	Number	The detailed diagnosis of this measure lists the name of the virtual machine, the location of the virtual machine and the Operating system of the virtual machine.
Removed VMs	Indicates the number of virtual machines that were removed from the cloud during the last measurement period.	Number	The detailed diagnosis of this measure lists the name of the virtual machine, the location of the virtual machine and the Operating system of the virtual machine.
Other VMs	Indicates the number of virtual machines that were in disconnected or invalid or inaccessible state during the last measurement period.	Number	The detailed diagnosis of this measure lists the name of the virtual machine, the state of the virtual machine and the location of the virtual machine.