Azure databases play a major role in running cloud-native applications seamlessly by offering scalability, high availability, and easy management. But ensuring uninterrupted database operations needs real-time performance monitoring and code-deep insights.
Here’s what to consider when choosing an Azure database monitoring solution in 2025.
Why native monitoring doesn’t cut it:
Azure provides built-in tools like Azure Monitor, SQL Insights, and Log Analytics to monitor cloud services. But these native-cloud monitoring solutions come with certain limitations like:
- Multiple interfaces: Admins will have to switch through different tools to monitor interconnected services.
- Manual correlation: Troubleshooting requires manual performance analysis to map performance issues across interdependent services.
- Complex setup: Some monitoring solutions might require additional integrations or third party deployments or KQL knowledge for full functionality.
- Limited scope: Azure-native monitoring solutions cater to Azure-only environments, providing limited visibility into hybrid or multi-cloud environments.
This is why most organizations opt for dedicated cloud monitoring solutions that offer centralized visibility, smart root-cause analysis, and extensive cloud support.
What to look for in an Azure database monitoring tool?
Real-time monitoring:
Monitor uptime, memory usage, disk I/O, and network traffic in real time to identify potential issues before things go out of hand. Periodic performance analysis helps with trend analysis, capacity planning, and optimizing resource allocation.
Database-specific metric tracking:
Your Azure database monitoring solution should be able to monitor KPIs unique to each database engine; like SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, MySQL, MariaDB, Cosmos DB, etc.
Key metrics include:
- Replication lag: High replication lag can lead to stale reads, impacting application performance and availability.
- Request rate and throughput: These metrics help assess database load and ensure it can handle user demand without bottlenecks.
- Deadlocks and blocked sessions: Deadlocks occur when concurrent transactions compete for the same resources, leading to transaction failures or delays. Monitoring deadlocks and blocked sessions helps you optimize query performance and avoid app crashes.
- Query execution and wait time: Monitoring query performance, status, and wait time is important for identifying slow queries and optimizing database performance.
Smart alerting and anomaly detection:
Make sure that your database monitoring solution offers modern and proactive monitoring features. This helps you stay ahead of performance issues and speed up issue resolution. You should look for:
- Configurable severity-based alerts: Severity-based alerts classify incidents and prioritize critical issues. This reduces alert noise and helps teams understand the urgency of incident resolution.
- Automated responses and ticket assignment: Automating escalations and triggering responsive actions saves time and improves mean time to resolution. This enhances quicker issue fixes and seamless database operations.
- AI/ML-driven anomaly detection: Leveraging AI and ML to identify performance anomalies help you understand the peak load times, correlate KPIs across multiple cloud deployments and fix potential issues before they can lead to operational challenges in Azure cloud.
Backup and Recovery monitoring:
Ensure that the tool offers monitoring services to track the health of Azure backup and recovery services. Ensure backup readiness and avoid data loss during outages or failures by keeping an eye on RPO and RTO.
Support for hybrid and multi-cloud environments:
Check if your monitoring tool provides visibility across on-premises, Azure, AWS, Google, Oracle, and other cloud platforms that constitute your cloud environment. Centralized monitoring helps you correlate data across environments and streamline performance analysis efficiently.
Cost and scalability:
Choose a tool that can scale with your infrastructure and offers transparent pricing. Optimize cloud costs by avoiding renewal for licenses you don’t need.
ManageEngine Applications Manager is one such tool that offers complete visibility into your Azure databases. It provides monitoring support for Azure database services like Azure SQL, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, and Cosmos DB. With extensive monitoring support for over 150 technologies, it centralizes infrastructure, cloud, and user experience monitoring. Download a 30-day free trial or book a demo to explore its full capabilities.
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