Azure Import Module for IcingaWeb2 Director

The migration of IT landscapes to cloud environments is common today. However, the question often remains how to monitor these newly created infrastructures and react to failures. For traditional infrastructure, monitoring tools such as Icinga are used. These tools are often deployed using configuration management methods, such as Ansible or Puppet.

In cloud environments, this is somewhat different. On the one hand, virtual machines are certainly used here, where these methods would be applicable. On the other hand, modern cloud environments also thrive on abstracting away from the virtual machine and offering services, for example as SaaS, in a decoupled manner. But how does one monitor such services?

Manual configuration of an Icinga2 monitoring system is not advisable, as these cloud environments, in particular, are characterized by high dynamism. The risk of not monitoring a service that was quickly added but later becomes important is high.

The Icinga2 and IcingaWeb2 project responded to these requirements for dynamic monitoring environments some time ago with the Director plugin. The Director plugin, using so-called importer modules, is capable of dynamically reading resources contained in various environments, such as “VMware VSphere” or “Amazon AWS“. These can then be automatically integrated into classic Icinga monitoring via rules.

Sponsored by DPD Deutschland GmbH, credativ GmbH is developing an extension module for the IcingaWeb2 Director, which allows dynamic integration of resources from the “Microsoft Azure Cloud“. This module queries the Microsoft Azure REST API and returns various resource types, which can then be automatically added to your monitoring via the Director. The module is already in use by our customers and will be further developed according to demand.

Ten resource types are already supported

Currently, the Azure Importer Module supports the following resource types:

• Virtual Machines
• Virtual Disks
• Network Interfaces for Virtual Machines
• Load Balancers
• Application Gateways
• Microsoft.DBforPostgreSQL^® servers (SaaS)
• Express Route Circuits
• Authorizations for Express Route Circuits
• Resource Groups
• Subscriptions

The module is now available as an open source solution

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