A couple of days while I was driving to the beach I noticed a problem with one of my machines running on Azure. Ofcourse I didn’t bring my laptop, so I first tried the Azure App in real life. I was very pleased. You can’t always predict what will happen or when, but you can be prepared. That’s where the recently updated, Azure mobile app comes in. Stay connected to your Azure resources – anytime, anywhere.
Using the App it’s possible to :
- Check status and critical metrics of your Azure resources
- Get notifications and alerts about important health issues
- Performance simple operations to resolve common issues
- Run powerful Azure Cloud Shell scripts in the App
You can take the power of Azure with you on your mobile phone/tablet!
After downloading the App from the store, it was very easy to get it up and running (support for MFA).
In my case I tested the Android version, but there is a iOS version also. Normally I don’t prefer working on my phone or tablet but just using my laptop or desktop but sometimes it’s very handy to be able to quickly restart a VM for example. Or see the load (metrics) of some of your services. Even be able to receive notifications is very handy!
The Azure app puts every subscription from every service in your pocket. Scroll through all your resources and resource groups, search by name, or filter by resource to find the resource you need.
Each resource includes the following information (when applicable):
- Status
- Number of errors in the past week
- Important properties (Essentials)
- Key usage metrics
- Related resources
- All resource properties
For those of you with a lot of subscriptions and resources, scrolling and filtering – on your mobile device! – might get a little tedious. Save swipes and taps by adding the resources you want to keep a close eye on to your favorites list. Just open the resource, tap the star, and go! The next time you open the app, you will start on the favorites tab to help get you to your resources faster than ever.
Perhaps the most important aspect of building your business in the cloud is the confidence and knowledge that everything’s up and running and your customers aren’t impacted by unexpected events. With the Azure app at hand, you’ll never need to guess. Just open the Notifications tab for a personalized list of Azure health alerts and important metrics that you’re monitoring for your resources.
If any of your resources in the selected subscription have been impacted by an Azure health event over the last week, you’ll see the details listed on the Notifications tab. Every health alert includes:
- Status
- Link to the impacted subscription
- Latest communication details
- Tracking ID unique to the event
- List of impacted locations
- List of impacted services
- Brief history of the status over the past week
You’ll also find your custom resource metric alert rules in the list. Each metric alert includes:
- Status (activated or resolved)
- Link to the related resource
- Description of the alert rule, if specified
- Brief history of the status over the last week
In addition to getting metric alerts on the Notifications tab, you’ll also be notified about these alerts when you visit resource details. Just tap the notification to open the details.
Many services offer simple commands to help you resolve common issues for your resources from the Azure app:
- Suspend and resume Analysis Services servers
- Open the API Management portal in the browser
- Start, stop, and restart App Service web apps and deployment slots
- Start and stop App Service environments
- Restart all App Service web apps in a plan or environment
- Open App Service web apps and deployment slots in the browser
- Start and stop Content Delivery Network endpoints
- Start, stop, and swap cloud service slots
- Open the HDInsight portal in the browser
- Open Log Analytics workspaces in the Operations Management Suite app
- Enable and disable Logic App workflows
- Enable and disable Scheduler job collections
- Start and stop Stream Analytics jobs
- Start, stop, and restart virtual machines
- Connect to Windows virtual machines using the RDP app
- Start, stop, and restart virtual machine scale set instances
- Open Visual Studio Team Services accounts in the browser
Of course, many more are on the way. As a companion app for mobile workers, the Azure app doesn’t include every feature in the Azure portal, but as you can see it provides great flexibility while using your phone or tablet.
I think the Azure App is a need to have for every Azure administrator! Just download the app in the appstore and let me know what your thank about the app!