Monitoring Azure Active Directory

Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is Microsoft’s multi-tenant, cloud-based directory and identity management service that provides core directory services, application access management, and identity protection. Azure AD also offers a standards-based platform that enables developers to deliver access control to their applications based on centralized policies and rules.

Why monitor Azure AD?

Azure AD provides users with the following two important benefits:

• Identity and access management (IAM): Boost security, productivity, and management across devices, data, apps, and infrastructures.
• On-the-go applications management: Access all of your cloud applications from any location or device using one identity.

Organizations can't afford to make up any losses that may occur if they aren't able to access their applications management or IAM. A real-time Azure AD monitoring tool must be in place to avoid such unforeseen circumstance.

Monitoring Azure AD with the Microsoft 365 admin center

As more and more organizations begin depending on cloud-based services like Azure AD, there's an increasing demand for a monitoring solution that can send real-time notifications on outages. Sadly, the Microsoft 365 Service Health Dashboard (SHD) doesn't send notifications about Azure AD service outages and only shows this information in a dashboard, which administrators have to pull up and analyze.

Azure AD monitoring with M365 Manager Plus

M365 Manager Plus, known for its Microsoft 365 reporting, management, auditing, and alerting features, monitors Azure AD 24/7 for issues or service outages.

M365 Manager Plus sends out instant email alerts when service outages and incidents occur. These detailed emails provide a complete summary of an incident with details on which feature has been affected, the number of users affected by the incident, the consequence of the incident, and more.

Azure AD performance monitoring

Slow response times can be caused by numerous factors including DNS resolution problems, network delays, and application wait times. A Microsoft support ticket won’t help you much if the problem is a network delay caused by your ISP. On the other side of that, your ISP can't really help with your Microsoft 365 performance problem if the issue is a long application wait time. Total visibility is the key to developing effective operational processes with Microsoft 365.

Exchange Online performance monitoring

M365 Manager Plus monitors the endpoints of Azure AD to keep the availability of the service in check. It provides graphs on the response time of each endpoint, which helps you understand Azure AD's performance over time.

Highlights of M365 Manager Plus

• Real-time alerts: Get instant email notifications on service incidents.
• Historical data: Gain access to historical Microsoft 365 service health monitoring data that's older than 30 days.
• In-depth graphs: View graphs illustrating the health status of Microsoft 365 services to facilitate quick decision-making.

Monitoring other services

Apart from monitoring Azure Active Directory, M365 Manager Plus also monitors the real-time health and performance of:

• Exchange Online
• OneDrive for Business
• Microsoft Teams
• Other major Microsoft 365 services