Azure management with Komiser just became easier

Why Azure?

Microsoft Azure is one of the top three cloud computing platforms and service providers, offering a wide range of cloud services for businesses to build, deploy, and manage applications and services in the cloud. Azure's flexible and scalable infrastructure can be tailored to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes, providing a reliable and efficient cloud solution.

One of the most significant benefits of using Azure is its scalability, which enables businesses to easily scale up or down their computing resources based on their needs. Azure's built-in security controls provide a highly secure infrastructure that meets the compliance requirements of various industries, such as healthcare, finance, and government.

Azure's key use cases include application hosting, data storage and management, disaster recovery, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

By integrating with Azure, Komiser provides increased visibility into Azure resources, accurate cost tracking and management, continuous monitoring, and cost optimization insights. This integration enables you to optimize your Azure cloud costs by identifying underutilized resources and enabling you to make pointed decisions that directly lower your cloud costs. Start taking control of your budgets effectively, prevent unexpected charges, and implement cost optimization best practices by tagging your resources and building organization specific custom views, resulting in significant cost insights and improved cost efficiency in your Azure environment.

Configuration

The Azure credentials required to successfully integrate Komiser and Azure can be generated by using a “service principal”. An Azure service principal is an identity created for use with applications, hosted services, and automated tools to access Azure resources.

Once the komiser service provider is created, we will add the associated environment variables to the config.toml file.

Creating a service principal

First, install the Azure CLI (az).

Then, login with the Azure CLI running az login

Now, create the service principal and give it a name of your choice by running the following command az ad sp create-for-rbac.

WARNING: The output of the az ad sp create-for-rbac command contains sensitive credentials, don’t share the output publically.

Locate the environment variables

The output of az ad sp create-for-rbac should look like this:

Next, you need to add the environment variables output to your configuration file.

Copy them from the output of az ad sp create-for-rbac. Check the mapping below for each value.

• tenantId is tenant in the JSON.
• clientId is appId in the JSON.
• clientSecret is password in the JSON.
• subscriptionId can be found here.

Copy your credentials as seen down below to integrate your Azure account to Komiser by adding a block to the config.toml file as follows:

The above example integrates a single Azure account to Komiser, if you want to add more accounts you would add additional [[azure]] blocks, adding unique credentials to each block.

Currently, if you want to integrate your Azure account with Komiser's Azure support (v1), the only option available is to add your sensitive credentials directly in the config.toml file. While this is a viable solution for testing and development environments, we recognize that it's not a production-ready solution, and we're actively working on delivering more secure and scalable authentication options in future updates.

Once you have added the environment variables to the configuration file, in the same directory, run the komiser start command.

Resource inventory view

This is the view of the Azure resources in the Komiser dashboard which has been saved in the Azure resources custom view.

Once your Azure resources are fetched and available on the Komiser inventory page, it's essential to start examining them to ensure there are no hidden or orphaned resources wasting space in your environment. With Komiser, you can sort, filter, and organize your resources into custom views that align with your team's needs and application's structure. This level of visibility means you won't miss any resources or encounter unexpected surprises in your cloud environment. So, make sure to keep your cloud resources in check by using Komiser to track and monitor your Azure infrastructure.

Regardless if you are a Developer, DevOps, or Cloud engineer. Dealing with the cloud can be tough at times, especially on your own. If you are using Tailwarden or Komiser and want to share your thoughts doubts and insights with other cloud practitioners feel free to join our Tailwarden discord server. Where you will find tips, community calls, and much more.