DEV Community

Cover image for Managing your Azure environment using natural language with Azure Copilot
Tidjani Belmansour, Ph.D.
Tidjani Belmansour, Ph.D.

Posted on

Managing your Azure environment using natural language with Azure Copilot

#azure #ai #azurecopilot

“Hey, are you awake? The cheese order app is down.”

— Message received at 03:07 from Leo, Azure admin at the legendary Couic-Couic Cheese Factory.

If you’ve ever jumped between Application Insights, Log Analytics, and Azure Monitor like a caffeine-fueled ninja in the middle of the night, you know the drill: logs, metrics, correlations, hypotheses, and that little anxiety slider creeping up by the minute. Manual troubleshooting is the #1 time thief in cloud operations. And when it’s not an incident, it’s a month-end report asking why your Azure bill went up 15% (“Did someone leave a Dev-XL-I’ll-Test-But-Forget VM running?”).

Welcome to the reality of cloud teams. Good news: Azure Copilot is here to bring simplicity, speed, and a little smile back into the game.

What Exactly Is Azure Copilot?

Azure Copilot is the AI assistant built into Azure that lets you manage your environment in natural language. You describe what you want to do, and it helps you design, implement, operate, optimize, and troubleshoot your resources—right inside the Azure Portal, the mobile app, or via CLI.

Leo sums it up perfectly:

“It’s like having a teammate who knows my Azure subscription, speaks my language, and never forgets where that Network Security Group named NSG-final-v3-definitive is hiding.”

Why Copilot and Not Just Any Chatbot?

Sure, you could ask any AI “Why is my app crashing?” But the game-changer here is context. Azure Copilot sees your environment (within your permissions because with great power comes great responsibility), understands your resources, their state, and configuration, and cross-references this with best practices and documentation. The result? Actionable answers, specific to your tenant and your workloads.

Five Superpowers of Azure Copilot (Tested and Approved by Leo)

1) Design

  • “For a high-availability ordering site with 1-hour disaster recovery, what should I use?” Copilot suggests an architecture (availability zones, replication, Front Door/Traffic Manager, etc.), explains service choices, and their impact on SLA/HA/DR.

2) Implement

  • “Generate a **Bicep* script for App Service + Key Vault + alert.”* Copilot can create scaffolding, fill parameters, and apply best practices. Same for Terraform if that's where your preference is.

3) Operate

  • “List all **VMs* with RDP open, web apps with expired SSL certificates, blobs that are publicly accessible, and resources outside Canada.”* Copilot gives you targeted inventories, detects performance anomalies, and saves hours of portal spelunking.

4) Optimize

  • “My bill went up 15% last month. Why?” Copilot analyzes cost drivers, forecasts next 3 months, suggests better SKUs, and flags forgotten environments. It also helps harden compliance posture via Policy.

5) Troubleshoot

  • “I’ve got this weird error on my App Service—what does it mean and how do I fix it?” Copilot explains the error and guides resolution (config, dependencies, quotas, diagnostics). Goodbye to “why the heck won’t my script work??” moments.

Is It Free?

Yes, current features are free. Microsoft says future capabilities might come with a cost—but nothing concrete yet. For now, enjoy!

Security: Let’s Talk About It

Adopting an AI assistant raises legit questions: access rights, data isolation, traceability, compliance. Azure Copilot runs within Azure’s security model, respects RBAC, and only shows what you’re authorized to see. This is often the biggest adoption hurdle—so involve your security team early.

In a future article, I will cover more about security mechanisms but for now, remember that Azure Copilot can only perform actions that you are allowed to perform and see data that you are allowed to see.

How Do You Access It?

  • Azure Portal: Azure Copilot panels appear in supported contexts.
  • Azure Mobile App: Handy for quick checks on the go.
  • CLI: For terminal lovers, Azure Copilot accelerates workflows and suggests commands. This happens through AI Shell (more on that in an upcoming post).

Will Copilot Steal My Job?

Leo wonders the same (and so do we). No. Copilot doesn’t replace understanding business priorities (or politics…). It amplifies your impact by removing technical friction, so you can focus on what matters: service quality, security, compliance, speed-to-market, and collaboration.

Think of it as an assistant: it does real work, but you stay in control.

Couic-Couic Cheese Factory Use Cases (Almost Real)

  • Incident at 03:07: Ordering app is slow.

    Copilot spots CPU spike on App Service, correlates with a function looping over a public blob full of HD cheese glamour shots.

    👉 Fix: Throttle + cache + CDN, lock blob, update Policy.

    🕒 Time saved: 90 min. Stress avoided: immeasurable.

  • Month-end +15% bill:

    Copilot isolates cost increase to dev/test (oversized SKU, permissive autoscale), suggests right-sizing and shutdown schedule.

    👉 Fix: Autoscale tuning, cost center tags, budget alerts.

    💰 Savings: Significant. Finance loves Leo.

  • Canada-only audit:

    Copilot lists resources outside CA, expired certs, and generates a remediation plan.

    👉 Fix: Migration, cert renewal, stronger Policy.

What You Can Do Today

  1. Ask concrete questions

    • “Show me web apps with expired SSL.”
    • “Which VMs have RDP exposed?”
    • “Generate Bicep for Key Vault + App Service + CPU alert.”

  2. Request explanations + fixes

    • “I have error X on my Function App—why and how to fix?”

  3. Optimize governance and costs

    • “Why did my bill increase and how to reduce it?”
    • “Forecast my costs for the next 3 months.”
    • “Help me harden Policy compliance.”

  4. Use it in the right context

    • Portal for visibility and actions.
    • Mobile for quick checks.
    • CLI for scripted workflows.

In Short

With Azure Copilot, you can:

  • Get precise insights into your environment.
  • Discover and learn new Azure features without having 12 tabs open.
  • Perform complex or tedious tasks simply by describing them in natural language.

Azure Copilot doesn’t replace human expertise—it unlocks it. And it gives Leo (and you) more peaceful nights.

Your Turn

Have you tried Azure Copilot yet?

What was your first “aha moment”?

Share it—and let’s turn your use cases into reusable Copilot prompts playbooks.

🎁 Prompt Cheat Sheet

Design

  • “Suggest an architecture for a high-availability web app with DR in 1 hour.”
  • “What Azure services should I use for SLA 99.99%?”

Implement

  • “Generate a Bicep script for App Service + Key Vault + alert.”
  • “Create Terraform for a VM with NSG and diagnostics enabled.”

Operate

  • “List VMs with RDP open.”
  • “Show web apps with expired SSL certificates.”
  • “Find blobs that are publicly accessible.”

Optimize

  • “Why did my Azure bill increase by 15% last month?”
  • “Forecast my costs for the next 3 months.”
  • “Suggest a better SKU for VM xyz.”

Troubleshoot

  • “Explain this error on my Function App and how to fix it.”
  • “Why is my App Service slow and what can I do?”

Top comments (0)