In modern working life, it is important to have a finger on the pulse: things sometimes change so quickly that any delay could be fatal. With that in mind, Microsoft has developed a powerful mobile application allowing you to monitor and maintain your Azure resources when on-the-go.
The idea behind Azure Mobile App is to let users manage their Azure resources from the convenience of their smartphones. Sounds cool, right? Let’s dive deeper into the topic and walk through the capabilities, advantages, and limitations of this Azure Portal mobile application.
What is Azure Portal?
Designed for continuous availability, Microsoft Azure Portal comprises a web-based console for building, managing, and monitoring Azure environments. It is a platform where users can access and manage all of their Azure resources in one place: from simple web applications and subscriptions to complex cloud deployments.
However, using Azure Portal from mobile devices is not that comfortable, no matter which browser you are utilizing. To let users stay connected to their Azure environment anytime from anywhere, Microsoft has developed a lightweight yet powerful mobile application available both for Android and iOS. Without it, you cannot say you’re truly controlling your Azure.
Benefits of Azure Mobile App
- Access all your Azure resources from your mobile device
- Receive alerts and notifications when not at the computer
- Swiftly identify and even resolve issues that arise in your Azure environments
- Leverage the entire power of the Cloud Shell experience on your mobile device
Azure Mobile App alerts
Perhaps the most useful feature of the app is alert notifications. They let you instantly know when something goes wrong. Thus, you can quickly open the app and take the necessary actions. You can also delve into the details of the alerts and comprehend what, when, and why went wrong. More than that, in the alert notification, you get a link to the target resource in case you need to scrutinize the problem more thoroughly.
Let’s consider the following worked example. You get a push notification informing you that one of your Azure services has stopped. Right from your smartphone, you start the service and change the alert status so that your team knows that the action has already been taken, and they do not need to worry about it. Quite convenient, yuh?
What can you do from app?
- Check the status of your subscriptions, resource groups, and cloud resources
- View information about the most recent resources, activity logs, access control (IAM), and more
- Start and stop services like VMs, App Services, Logic Apps
- Monitor Azure resources using Service Health
- Diagnose and fix problems quickly
- Use Cloud Shell commands to control Azure resources on a mobile device
If you use the interactive Cloud Shell environment to work with Azure services, you still can benefit greatly from Azure Mobile App. Using Azure Cloud Shell – Bash or PowerShell – you can manage your Azure environment from your smartphone whether or not you know the commands by heart. Since “az help” is constantly available and provides a list of recognized commands for managing your Azure resources, you do not need to be an expert in Azure CLI or Azure PowerShell.
Azure Mobile App dashboard
The Recent resources section is designed to give you a quick access to the resources you have recently worked with. The Service Health card allows you to instantly know if there are any problems with your Azure resources that you need to take care of. The Favorites section lets you pin the most important resources so that you could always know their status.
The dashboard is highly customizable: you can always choose the sections to be displayed and arrange them in the order that is convenient for you.
Limitations and Features
The Microsoft Azure mobile app boasts rich and useful functionality, however it is limited in comparison to using a web browser to access the service. It shouldn’t be interpreted as the Azure Portal’s full-scale successor. With the mobile application, you can view vital warnings, disable or enable your App Services, Azure Virtual Machines, and other Azure services. However, there is a number of significant restrictions. One of those is the ability to add new cloud services, resources, subscriptions, or resource groups. But who wants to perform all of those tasks on a mobile device? Working on a larger screen with the possibility of using SQL tools is usually preferable for Azure administrators and developers, especially when using Azure for cloud administration.
More and more companies today are considering moving their workloads to Azure Cloud as it is literally the platform of the future, thought out to the last detail. And Azure Mobile App proves it.
Conclusion
Azure Mobile App is quite practical for on-the-go management and operational duties that you suddenly need to complete but you cannot because for some reason you’re not at your computer. While you are away from home or the office, you might wish to keep an eye on the ball and be able to monitor and check the status of your Azure services. For mobile app developers and system integrators, Azure Mobile App can become a helpful assistant, allowing them to always stay in the loop when building highly scalable and globally accessible applications.
Also Read: 4 Useful Lessons You Can Learn from Popular Mobile Apps