Azure Monitor tracks everything—but visualizing and acting on that data? That’s where it gets real. I built a real-time cloud resource allocation monitor using Azure Monitor on the backend and a lightweight React dashboard on the frontend.
If you’re already working in Azure, this combo is incredibly effective. No bloat. Just clean, actionable insights.
Step 1: Understanding What Needs to Be Monitored
Before diving into any tool, define your goal. Mine was simple:
Track real-time usage of cloud resources—CPU, memory, storage, networking—for all running Azure services. Bonus: identify idle or over-scaled resources by resource group.
It’s not about pretty graphs. It’s about clarity and actionability.
Step 2: Azure Monitor – The Data Layer
Azure Monitor is powerful, but noisy. So I filtered it down to what mattered:
Metrics I Tracked:
- CPU percentage
- Memory usage
- Disk I/O
- Network bytes in/out
Logs & Events:
- Scaling activity logs
- Resource state changes
- Alerts for threshold breaches
I routed these metrics into Log Analytics so I could query them easily. Diagnostic settings helped push logs for things like CPU spikes and VM state changes into a dedicated workspace. Saved me multiple headaches later.
Pro Tip:
Don’t build your dashboard on raw logs—filter and shape the data first.
Step 3: Frontend with React – The Visualization Part
Let’s be real—no one wants to stare at logs. So I built a React dashboard.
Key Features:
- Card-based layout: One card per resource (VM, storage, functions)
- Color-coded status: Red/yellow/green indicators for CPU/memory thresholds
- Graph types: Clean line + bar charts—no clutter
- Polling every 30s: Lightweight fetch from backend REST API (no sockets)
- Expandable cards: Focus on critical resources, hide the rest
The UI stayed fast by only showing high-priority metrics. Filtering saved both CPU and user sanity.
Step 4: Cost-Saving Insights from Monitoring
After running for just a week, the real value emerged:
Things I Caught:
- VMs running idle (0.3% CPU over 48 hours)
- Azure Functions scaling unnecessarily from misconfigured triggers
- Overused regions vs. underused ones — bad load balancing
- Storage blobs untouched for weeks — moved to cold storage
Actions I Took:
- Auto-shutdown for idle VMs
- Custom scaling rules based on actual usage
- Cold storage transitions for stale data
- Alerts on dev-related spikes
I wasn’t just tracking anymore—I was optimizing.
Bonus Tips (From Painful Experience)
- Label your resources — filtering is a nightmare otherwise
- Start lean — don’t pull 50+ metrics at once
- Keep Azure Monitor queries simple — deeply nested queries slow everything down
- Define thresholds — avoid alert fatigue
- Review alerts monthly — false alarms build up fast
Conclusion
Setting up a real-time Azure resource monitor using Azure Monitor + React doesn’t require a PhD. It just needs clarity on what matters.
Once it’s running, it gives you insights that go beyond billing spreadsheets. You’ll see waste before it becomes expensive, and misconfigurations before they turn into outages.
This project alone helped reduce our Azure bill by 25% in two months. Just visibility + smart tweaks.
If you run anything on Azure—even a small stack—build a monitor like this. Lightweight. Clean. Real-time.
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