Azure Documentation

Azure Advisor Documentation

Azure Advisor is a personalized recommendation service that helps you follow best practices to optimize your Azure resources. It analyzes your resource configurations and usage telemetry, then recommends solutions that can help improve the performance, security, reliability, cost-effectiveness, and operational excellence of your Azure deployments.

Key Features and Benefits

  • Personalized recommendations based on your Azure usage.
  • Covers multiple domains: cost, performance, security, reliability, and operational excellence.
  • Actionable insights with clear steps to implement recommendations.
  • Integration with Azure services for seamless experience.
  • Helps reduce costs, improve security posture, and enhance resource performance.

Understanding Advisor Recommendations

Advisor recommendations are categorized into the following categories:

  • Cost: Identify underutilized or idle resources, optimize purchase options, and reduce operational expenses.
  • Performance: Enhance resource performance by scaling up or out, optimizing configuration, and leveraging caching.
  • Security: Strengthen your security posture by applying missing security updates, enabling multi-factor authentication, and resolving vulnerabilities.
  • Reliability: Improve the availability and resilience of your applications by configuring backup, disaster recovery, and health monitoring.
  • Operational Excellence: Optimize your deployment and management processes with recommendations on automation, monitoring, and patching.

Accessing Azure Advisor

You can access Azure Advisor through the Azure portal. Navigate to the Azure Advisor blade from the Azure services menu.

Azure Portal Steps:

  1. Sign in to the Azure portal.
  2. In the search bar at the top, type "Advisor" and select it from the results.
  3. The Advisor dashboard will display recommendations categorized by domain.

API and SDK Access

You can also programmatically access Advisor recommendations using the Azure CLI, Azure PowerShell, or the Azure SDKs.

Example: Fetching Recommendations with Azure CLI

az advisor recommendations list --resource-group myResourceGroup --output table

Common Recommendation Scenarios

Here are some common scenarios where Azure Advisor provides valuable recommendations:

  • Identifying unassociated IP addresses that incur charges.
  • Suggesting underutilized virtual machines that can be resized or shut down.
  • Recommending Azure Reserved Instances for cost savings on long-term workloads.
  • Highlighting missing security patches or configurations.
  • Advising on enabling auto-recovery for virtual machines.

Best Practices for Using Advisor

  • Regularly review Advisor recommendations.
  • Prioritize recommendations based on their impact and effort.
  • Configure email notifications for new recommendations.
  • Integrate Advisor into your operational workflows.
  • Provide feedback on recommendations to help improve the service.

Further Reading

API Reference Snippet

The Azure Advisor API allows you to retrieve recommendations programmatically. Below is a simplified representation of an API endpoint.

HTTP Method URL Description
GET /subscriptions/{subscriptionId}/providers/Microsoft.Advisor/recommendations Retrieves a list of all Advisor recommendations for a subscription.
GET /subscriptions/{subscriptionId}/resourceGroups/{resourceGroupName}/providers/Microsoft.Advisor/recommendations Retrieves a list of Advisor recommendations for a specific resource group.
GET /subscriptions/{subscriptionId}/resourceGroups/{resourceGroupName}/providers/{provider}/{resourceType}/{resourceName}/providers/Microsoft.Advisor/recommendations Retrieves Advisor recommendations for a specific resource.
GET /subscriptions/{subscriptionId}/providers/Microsoft.Advisor/suppressions Retrieves the list of suppressed recommendations.