To give administrators a better insight into the flow of data traffic in the cloud, Microsoft is now adding a number of functions to the Azure Firewall.

Data traffic in the cloud can fluctuate. Microsoft is now rolling out some updates to Azure to help admins better understand why traffic is slowing down or behaving strangely.

More options

The three novelties are Latency Probe metrics, Flow Trace logs, and Top Flows logs. These features are now in preview and are designed to enhance the firewall’s as-a-service capabilities.

Microsoft is the second largest cloud service provider in the world after Amazon. That means a lot of data. A lot. Azure Firewall sits between the application server and the end user. If traffic slows down or the application loses connection, the firewall can fix the problem at the source, according to product manager Shabaz Shaik.

He also pointed out that the upgrades in terms of statistics and registration aim to provide more insight into all traffic passing through Azure Firewall.

Practical

According to Shaik, traffic speed is the number one indicator of a network’s health. The Latency Probe metric works with Pingmesh technology, which was developed to analyze and measure network interactions of large data centers.

This allows you to measure the average data rate of the firewall yourself with this function. If it becomes slow, it could be due to the network, traffic throughput, or high CPU usage. Azure Firewall registers different types of traffic: the network, applications, or information about an imminent attack. However, this record now only shows the first attempt by one transmission control protocol and not the whole process.

Enter flow trace logs. This allows IT admins to check additional authentication flags (like SYN-ACK or INVALID) and check the return packet for a connection problem or an unknown packet.

The Top Flows feature shows admins what’s driving the most traffic and lets them decide whether to let it through or not. Shabaz Shaik warned that this feature puts a heavy load on the CPU. Therefore, it is best for companies to use them only for specific cases and not longer than a week.

This announcement comes days after news that Azure could face a European scrutiny due to antitrust complaints about the cloud service. The question is whether the American company really takes it seriously, Azure is popular. In Belgium, for example, more than half of the companies are customers of the service.