Monitoring tools

📘Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900)

Azure Advisor is an important monitoring and optimization tool in Microsoft Azure. For the AZ-900 exam, you must understand what Azure Advisor is, how it works, what types of recommendations it gives, and how it helps improve cost, performance, security, reliability, and operations.

This topic is commonly tested in the Monitoring and Management section of the exam.

1. What is Azure Advisor?

Azure Advisor is a free Azure service that analyzes your Azure resources and provides personalized recommendations to help you:

Reduce costs
Improve performance
Increase reliability
Strengthen security
Improve operational excellence

Azure Advisor continuously checks your Azure environment and suggests actions to optimize your resources.

It does not automatically make changes. It only gives recommendations. You decide whether to apply them.

2. Why Azure Advisor is Important

In an IT environment, organizations may:

Run virtual machines (VMs)
Store data in Azure Storage
Use Azure SQL databases
Deploy web apps and APIs
Use networking services

Over time, some resources may:

Be underused (wasting money)
Be overused (causing performance problems)
Not follow security best practices
Lack backup or redundancy

Azure Advisor detects these issues and suggests improvements.

3. The Five Recommendation Categories

For the AZ-900 exam, you must remember that Azure Advisor provides recommendations in five main categories:

Cost
Performance
Reliability
Security
Operational Excellence

Let’s understand each one clearly.

3.1 Cost Recommendations

These recommendations help reduce your Azure spending.

Azure Advisor checks for:

Idle or underutilized virtual machines
Unused resources
Opportunities to resize VMs
Suggestions for Reserved Instances
Use of Azure Hybrid Benefit

Example (IT Environment)

If a company runs a virtual machine that uses only 5% CPU most of the time, Azure Advisor may recommend:

Resizing the VM to a smaller size
Shutting it down if not needed

This helps save money.

For the Exam

Remember:

Azure Advisor helps reduce costs by identifying underutilized resources and recommending resizing or removal.

3.2 Performance Recommendations

These recommendations help improve the speed and responsiveness of applications.

Azure Advisor checks for:

High CPU usage
Storage performance limits
Networking bottlenecks
VM configuration issues

Example (IT Environment)

If an application hosted on a VM constantly shows 90% CPU usage, Azure Advisor may recommend:

Upgrading to a larger VM size
Moving to a performance-optimized storage option

This ensures applications run smoothly.

For the Exam

Remember:

Performance recommendations help improve speed and efficiency of Azure resources.

3.3 Reliability Recommendations

These recommendations help improve availability and reduce downtime.

Azure Advisor checks whether:

VMs are deployed in availability zones
Backup is configured
Redundancy is enabled
High availability features are used

Example (IT Environment)

If a company runs a single VM without backup or redundancy, Azure Advisor may recommend:

Enabling Azure Backup
Using Availability Zones
Using a load balancer for multiple VMs

This protects applications from hardware failure or outages.

For the Exam

Remember:

Reliability recommendations improve business continuity and reduce downtime.

3.4 Security Recommendations

Security recommendations are powered by Microsoft Defender for Cloud.

Azure Advisor checks for:

Unprotected virtual machines
Missing security updates
Open ports exposed to the internet
Missing encryption
Weak security configurations

Example (IT Environment)

If a VM has port 3389 (RDP) open to the public internet, Azure Advisor may recommend:

Restricting access using Network Security Groups (NSGs)
Enabling Just-in-Time (JIT) VM access

This reduces security risks.

For the Exam

Remember:

Security recommendations come from Microsoft Defender for Cloud.

This is a very important exam point.

3.5 Operational Excellence Recommendations

These recommendations help improve management processes and resource organization.

Azure Advisor checks for:

Missing monitoring
Missing diagnostic logs
Best practice configuration gaps
Resource management improvements

Example (IT Environment)

If a company has deployed critical applications but has not enabled monitoring, Azure Advisor may recommend:

Enabling Azure Monitor
Configuring diagnostic logging

This helps IT teams detect and resolve issues faster.

For the Exam

Remember:

Operational Excellence improves management, monitoring, and governance practices.

4. How Azure Advisor Works

Azure Advisor:

Analyzes your deployed Azure resources.
Uses telemetry and usage data.
Compares against Microsoft best practices.
Generates personalized recommendations.
Allows you to:
- View recommendations
- Postpone them
- Dismiss them
- Implement them

It updates regularly.

5. Where to Access Azure Advisor

You can access Azure Advisor:

From the Azure portal
By searching for “Advisor” in the search bar
Through Azure CLI and PowerShell (advanced usage)

It provides:

A dashboard overview
Filtering by subscription
Filtering by category
Export options

6. Azure Advisor and Cost Management

Azure Advisor works closely with:

Azure Cost Management
Billing tools

However:

Azure Advisor gives optimization suggestions
Azure Cost Management tracks and analyzes spending

For the exam, understand the difference.

7. Azure Advisor is Free

Important exam point:

Azure Advisor is available at no additional cost.

However, applying recommendations (such as upgrading VM size) may increase costs.

8. Azure Advisor vs Azure Monitor (Exam Comparison)

Students often confuse these two.

Azure Advisor	Azure Monitor
Gives recommendations	Collects metrics and logs
Focuses on optimization	Focuses on monitoring
Suggests improvements	Detects and alerts issues
Free service	Some features may cost money

For AZ-900, you should clearly understand this difference.

9. Azure Advisor and Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Another important exam connection:

Security recommendations in Azure Advisor are integrated with Microsoft Defender for Cloud.
Defender for Cloud performs deeper security analysis.
Azure Advisor shows high-level security suggestions.

10. Typical Exam Question Scenarios

You may see questions like:

Which Azure service provides cost-saving recommendations?
Which tool helps identify underutilized VMs?
Which service suggests improving availability configuration?
Which service gives security best practice recommendations?

Correct answer: Azure Advisor

11. Key Points to Remember for AZ-900

Make sure you remember these:

Azure Advisor provides personalized best-practice recommendations.
It improves:
- Cost
- Performance
- Reliability
- Security
- Operational Excellence
It is free.
Security recommendations are integrated with Microsoft Defender for Cloud.
It does not automatically fix issues.
It analyzes deployed Azure resources.

12. Simple Summary for Non-IT Learners

Azure Advisor is like a smart assistant inside Azure.

It:

Checks your cloud environment.
Finds areas that are inefficient or risky.
Suggests improvements.
Helps save money.
Helps improve performance.
Helps strengthen security.
Helps avoid downtime.

It does not make changes automatically. It only recommends.

Final Exam Tip

If the exam question says:

“Get best practice recommendations”
“Reduce Azure costs”
“Improve reliability”
“Optimize performance”
“Identify security improvements”

The correct answer is very likely:

Azure Advisor