Introduction


Resources monitored by CloudMonix can be categorized for a number of purposes

  • Ease of overall management
  • Visualization of monitored data
  • Filtering of alerts
  • Filtering of reports
  • Assignment of Maintenance Windows


CloudMonix customers frequently use resource categories to separate resources by the following

  • resource types (ie: categories for Azure Storage, Azure Compute, Windows VMs, etc), 
  • customers (ie: categories for Customer1, Customer2, etc)
  • applications (ie: categories for App1, App2, etc)
  • priorities (ie: categories for Critical, Non-critical, etc)


How-to


CloudMonix categories work similar to "tags".  Any resource can belong to any number of categories.  A single category can hold any number of resources.  So it is not unreasonable for a resource to belong to a category that describes its type, purpose, and overall importance


CloudMonix categories can be assigned from a number of places

  1. During Setup Wizard (as resources are brought into the system)
  2. Resource Configuration screen  (each individual resource can be assigned any number of categories)
  3. Performance Dashboard (each dashboard on the Performance Dashboard screen is a resource category)



Setup Wizard screen

During Setup Wizard resource discovery process, users are allowed to customize categories of resources. Either choose from any number of existing categories, or type in new names (click on it after typing).  If a category does not exist, it will be created after Setup Wizard completes successfully.  CloudMonix, if possible, will try to import Resource Groups from Azure subscription as default Categories



Monitoring Settings/Resource Configuration screen

Every Monitoring Settings dialog contains Categories field on the bottom of the Definition tab, that allows user to tag a resource with any number of categories.  Either choose from any number of existing categories, or type in new names (click on it after typing).  If a category does not exist, it will be created during the Save operation of the dialog.  




Performance Dashboard resource category assignment

The most expedient way to create or change resource categories is on the Performance Dashboard screen.  Each Category is represented by a dashboard.  It is easy to edit a single category (Properties option) and choose which resources belong to it, or add a new one (+/plus button)



Usage


Dashboards

Resource Categories are utilized on the Performance and Status dashboards to separate resources visually.  Learn more about Performance Dashboard screen here.   Learn more about Status Dashboard screen here.


Scheduled Reports

Executive Summary, Capacity, Alert, and other scheduled reports can be tailored to a specific resource category.  This is often useful in scenarios where resource categories are represented as individual customers (MSP scenarios).   Thus, scheduled reports can be sent to individual customers.  Learn more about Scheduled Reports here.


Notification filtering

Alert emails and other notifications can be routed to different destinations based on resource categories.  This is useful when resource categories represent different applications or resource types.  Example, different people can be receiving alerts for SQL and Compute resources, or perhaps for Application1 vs Application2, different AutoTask connections can be receiving alerts for different customers, etc.  Learn more about Notification Management here.


Maintenance Windows

Custom maintenance windows can be assigned to specific resource groups.  This is useful when different applications or customers have specific downtime maintenance windows.  This functionality is forthcoming