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Save time for servicedesk with OpalisCustom availability monitoring
What if you need to monitor something that require a custom script? For example a sequence of checks? That is possible with a PowerShell script that do all the checks, and then submit the result to the workspace. In this example I will monitor port 25565 on a Minecraft server with a PowerShell script. Monitoring a network port is possible with the network insight feature, but it is still a good example as you can change the PowerShell script do do almost anything.
The first step was to create an Azure Automation runbook to check if the port is open. The runbook submit the result to Log Analytics through the data collector API.
A challenge with the runbook is schedules only allow it to run once per hour. To trigger the runbook more often, for example every five minutes, we can trigger it from a Logic Apps.
The PowerShell based runbook is now triggered to run every five minutes, sending its result to the Log Analytic workspace. Once the data is in the workspace, we can query it with a query, and for example show availability of the network port. As you can see on line six in the query, I have comment (for demo purpose) the line that shows only events from yesterday. The following blog post, Return data only during office hours and workdays , explains the query in details.
let totalevents = (24 * 12);
Custom_Port_CL
| extend localTimestamp = TimeGenerated + 2h
| where Port_s == "Minecraft Port"
| where Result_s == "Success"
// | where localTimestamp between (startofday(now(-1d)) .. endofday(now(-1d)) )
| summarize sum01 = count() by Port_s
| extend percentage = (todouble(sum01) * 100 / todouble(totalevents))
| project Port_s, percentage, events=sum01, possible_events=totalevents
The query will show percentage availability based on one event expected every five minutes.
Visualize Service Map data in Microsoft Visio
A common question in data center migration scenarios is dependencies between servers. Service Map can be very valuable in this scenario, visualizing TCP communication between processes on different servers.
Even if Service Map provides a great value we often hear a couple of questions, for example, visualize data for more than one hour and include more resources/servers in one image. Today this is not possible with the current feature set. But all the data needed is in the Log Analytics workspace, and we can access the data through the REST API 🙂
In this blog post, we want to show you how to visualize this data in Visio. We have built a PowerShell script that export data from the Log Analytics workspace and then builds a Visio drawing based on the information. The PowerShell script connects to Log Analytics, runs a query and saves the result in a text file. The query in our example lists all connections inbound and outbound for a server last week. The PowerShell script then reads the text file and for each connection, it draws it in the Visio file.
In the image below you see an example of the output in Visio. The example in the example we ran the script for a domain controller with a large number of connected servers, most likely more than the average server in a LOB application. In the example you can also see that for all connections to Azure services, we replace the server icon with a cloud icon.
Of course, you can use any query you want and visualize the data any way you want in Visio. Maybe you want to use different server shapes depending on communication type, or maybe you want to make some connections red if they have transferred a large about data.
In the PowerShell script, you can see that we use server_m.vssx and networklocations.vssx stencil files to find servers and cloud icons. These files and included in the Microsoft Visio installation. For more information about the PowerShell module used, please see VisioBot3000.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.
From Service Map to Network Security Group
Many data center migration scenarios include moving from a central firewall to multiple smaller firewalls and network security groups. A common challenge is how to configure each network security group (NSG). What should be allowed?
One way to map out which traffic to allow is using Service Map, as shown in previous blog posts. It is also possible to take it one step further, by automatically reading Service Map data from Log Analytics and building NSG rules based on the collected data.
To show an example of this, we have put together a PowerShell script. The script reads Service Map data for a specific server and builds an NSG and NSG rules based on the read data. The NSG is then attached to the server’s network adapter. Download the script here.
Of course, there are some risks with this; for example, if there is an “evil process†running on the server and communicating on the network, then there will be an NSG rule for this too. Also, the Service Map will only collect data for TCP traffic, not UDP, and the script expects the server to already exist in Azure. You will not be able to use this script to create NSG rules for servers that have not been migrated.
Thanks to Vanessa for good conversation and ideas 🙂
Disclaimer: Cloud is a very fast-moving target. It means that by the time you’re reading this post, everything described here could have been changed completely. The blog post is provided “AS-IS†with no warranties.
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