Azure Management Framework | Infopulse

Azure Management Framework

Azure Management Framework is a set of best practices and quality standards governing cloud transformation projects that Azure Expert MSP companies should follow when providing these services to their clients.

 

As an Azure Expert MSP, Infopulse provides the execution of the Microsoft cloud adoption projects in accordance with the established practices and processes stated within the Azure Management Framework.

The framework presented below consists of the Management Baseline, Enhanced Managed Baseline, and Platform and Workload Specializations, listing the recommended processes and tools that should be implemented to achieve cloud operational excellence.

Management Baseline

Management Baseline outlines basic processes and tools required to establish resource consistency across Azure and optimize operational management. We recommend implementing all these processes and operations for the best results.

Management Baseline covers the following areas:

Inventory and Visibility in Azure

Create an inventory of assets across multiple clouds and develop visibility into the run state of each asset.

Processes

Monitor health of Azure services

Health, performance, and diagnostics for services running in Azure

Log centralization

Central logging for all visibility purposes

Monitoring centralization

Central monitoring of operational data and trends

Subscription monitoring

Monitoring change at the subscription level

Network monitoring

Monitoring network changes and performance

Additional processes

Virtual machine inventory and change tracking

Inventory VMs and monitor changes for guest OS level

Guest OS monitoring

Monitoring changes and performance of VMs

DNS monitoring

Security, performance, and operations of DNS

To set up these processes, the following Azure tools need to be activated and tuned:

Operational Compliance in Azure

Establish controls and processes to ensure each state is properly configured and running in a well-governed environment.

Processes

Patch management

Management and scheduling of updates

Policy enforcement

Policy enforcement to ensure environment and guest compliance

Environment configuration

Automated compliance for core services

To set up these processes, the following Azure tools need to be activated and tuned:

Protect and Recover in Azure

Ensure all managed assets are protected and can be recovered using baseline management tooling.

Processes

Protect data

Back up data and virtual machines in the cloud

Protect the environment

Strengthen security and provide advanced threat protection across your hybrid workloads

To set up these processes, the following Azure tools need to be activated and tuned:

Enhanced Management Baseline

In addition to the standard Management Baseline processes, we offer the adoption of the additional processes and tools to further improve and streamline the Azure environment management.

The suggested processes include but are not limited to the list below.

Processes

Service change tracking

Tool: Azure Resource Graph

Aim/Potential benefits: Greater visibility into changes to Azure services might help detect negative effects sooner or remediate them faster

IT Service Management (ITSM) integration

Tool: IT Service Management Connector

Aim/Potential Benefits: 

  • Automated ITSM connection creates awareness sooner.
  • Automated tickets creation based on Azure notifications or Alerts
Operations automation

Tool: Azure Automation

Aim/Potential benefits: 

  • Automate operational compliance for a faster and more accurate response to change.
  • Routines automation.
Performance automation

Tool: Azure Automation

Aim/Potential benefits: Automate operational compliance with performance expectations to resolve common resource-specific scaling or sizing issues

Multicloud operations

Tool: Azure Automation Hybrid Runbook Worker

Aim/Potential benefits: Automate operations across multiple clouds (Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services)

Breach notification

Tool: Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Aim/Potential benefits:

  • Extend protection to include security-breach recovery triggers.
  • Also, an automated response to a security-breach trigger could be developed and implemented.

Platform and Workload Specializations

Platform and Workload specializations are extensions to the standard Management Baseline. We suggest adding these specialized operations for the mission-critical workloads.

The suggested processes include but are not limited to the list below.

Processes

Improve system design

Tool: Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework

Aim/Potential benefits: Improving the architectural design of the platform to improve operations

Automate remediation

Tool: Azure Automation

Aim/Potential benefits: Responding to advanced platform data with platform-specific automation

Container performance

Tool: Azure Monitor for containers

Aim/Potential benefits: Monitoring and diagnostics of containers

Platform as a service (PaaS) data performance

Tool: Azure SQL Analytics

Aim/Potential benefits: Monitoring and diagnostics for PaaS databases

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) data performance

Tool: SQL Server Health Check

Aim/Potential benefits: Monitoring and diagnostics for IaaS databases

Application monitoring

Tool: Application Insights

Aim/Potential benefits: Monitoring and diagnostics for applications

Performance, availability, and usage

Tool: Application Insights

Advanced application monitoring with the application dashboard, composite maps, usage, and tracing


We have a solution to your needs. Just send us a message, and our experts will follow up with you asap.

Please specify your request

Thank you!

We have received your request and will contact you back soon.