Azure Monitor Updates Improve Processes, Affect Costs

• Azure Monitor is a critical service for avoiding downtime and tuning performance of Azure deployments.
• A new change analysis feature can help administrators find configuration and other application changes that could be causing problems.
• Other updates include a new type of logging that could cut costs for short-term projects, and billing meter changes that could add new costs.
• A new agent will require migration within two years.

Azure Monitor offers extensive capabilities for monitoring Azure deployments, which is a critical practice to ensure solutions remain available and meet performance and functionality requirements. Monitor ingests metrics and logs and can generate alerts for all Azure services and certain deployments outside of Azure. Monitor is a standard component of all Azure deployments, and it underlies several portions of Azure functionality even when customers do not use it directly. For example, Microsoft Sentinel relies on Monitor, and Azure portal UIs for most service types include charts that are generated by Monitor.