Azure Traffic Analytics Reports on Network Activity

• Azure Traffic Analytics provides reports and visualizations of data flow and activity in Azure virtual networks.
• It offers more insight into Azure network activity than is provided by examining individual resources or log files.
• The information can ensure that networks, hosts, and applications are configured and operating effectively.
• It does not provide real-time monitoring, alerts, or actions, and customers will need additional tools for complete network management.

Service Overview

Traffic Analytics is a service that can analyze Network Security Group (NSG) flow logs and provide reports and visualization on data flow and activity in Azure virtual networks, including network hosts and application protocols. NSGs are an Azure networking feature that control the flow of traffic into or out of a virtual network, or resources in that network. NSG flow logs record information about ingress and egress IP traffic through the resources addressed by an NSG.

Traffic Analytics processes NSG flow logs from multiple sources, adding metadata regarding geography, security, and network topology. The resulting information is stored in an Azure Log Analytics workspace, which is used to generate reports and visualizations accessible from the Traffic Analytics dashboard. (See the illustration “Azure Traffic Analytics Dashboard“.)