Azure Automanage helps you significantly reduce day-to-day management tasks with automated operations across the entire lifecycle of Windows Server virtual machines in Azure. IT Admins can manage their VMs with point-and-click simplicity, individually or at scale.
We are excited to announce the public preview of Azure Automanage with Azure Monitor Agent integration. This new capability provides a comprehensive solution for managing your virtual machines (VMs) in Azure.
With Azure Automanage, you can now easily onboard your VMs to Azure Monitor using the industry standard Azure Monitoring Agent and take advantage of its powerful monitoring and alerting capabilities.
This is supported for both Azure Virtual Machines as well as Azure Arc Hybrid Computing Machines.
For the scope of the Public Preview, a custom configuration profile is required.
An Azure Resource Manager Template has been provided below to accelerate your testing of this new feature!
Azure Automanage is a service that eliminates the need to discover, know how to onboard, and how to configure certain services in Azure that would benefit your virtual machine. These services are considered to be Azure best practices services, and help enhance reliability, security, and management for virtual machines. Example services include Azure Update Management and Azure Backup. After onboarding your machines to Azure Automanage, each best practice service is configured to its recommended settings. However, if you want to customize the best practice services and settings, you can use the Custom Profile option. Azure Automanage also automatically monitors for drift and corrects for it when detected.
What this means is if your virtual machine or Arc-enabled server is onboarded to Azure Automanage, we’ll monitor your machine to ensure that it continues to comply with its configuration profile across its entire lifecycle. If your virtual machine does drift or deviate from the profile (for example, if a service is off-boarded), we will correct it and pull your machine back into the desired state.
With the integration of Azure Monitor, you can now monitor your VMs for performance, availability, and security issues. Azure Monitor provides a unified view of your VMs and their dependencies, enabling you to quickly identify and troubleshoot issues. You can also create custom alerts and notifications based on your specific requirements.
To get started with Azure Automanage with Azure Monitor integration, simply follow these steps:
In the Azure Portal, enroll your subscriptions in the 'AutomanageAzureMonitoringAgent' preview feature
Create a new Custom Profile resource containing the following property LogAnalytics/UseAma with the value of true
Onboard your VMs to Azure Automanage.
Enable Azure Monitor for your VMs.
You can simply execute the following template on the Resource Group of your choice to accelerate the creation of your custom Configuration Profile.
{
"$schema": "https://schema.management.azure.com/schemas/2019-04-01/deploymentTemplate.json#",
"contentVersion": "1.0.0.0",
"parameters": {
"name": {
"type": "string",
"metadata": {
"description": "The name of the configuration profile."
}
},
"region": {
"type": "string",
"defaultValue": "[resourceGroup().location]",
"metadata": {
"description": "The region where the configuration profile will be created."
}
}
},
"resources": [
{
"name": "[parameters('name')]",
"type": "Microsoft.Automanage/configurationProfiles",
"location": "[parameters('region')]",
"apiVersion": "2022-05-04",
"properties": {
"configuration": {
"LogAnalytics/UseAma": true,
"LogAnalytics/Enable": true,
"ChangeTrackingAndInventory/Enable": true
}
}
}
]
}
For more information on how to get started, please visit the following links: Announcing the Public Preview of Azure Monitor Public Preview: Announcing New Capabilities for Azure Automanage
We hope you enjoy using Azure Automanage with Azure Monitor integration. If you have any questions or feedback, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.