Azure MonitoringWithout a Second Dashboard
Bleemeo reads Azure Monitor for you: point it at a subscription and it discovers your VMs, databases, load balancers, storage accounts and Function Apps, then builds a dashboard for each service type. Your Azure resources land next to your own servers, in the same graphs and the same alerts.
Read-only access • Monitoring Reader role • No agent required on Azure resources
Overview
Your Azure Bill and Your Servers, on One Screen
Azure Monitor knows everything about your Azure resources and nothing about the rest of your infrastructure. If you run VMs in Azure and servers elsewhere — on-premises, at another provider, in Kubernetes — you end up with two consoles, two alerting systems, and no single answer to "is the platform healthy right now?"
Bleemeo connects to Azure Monitor with a read-only role and pulls the metrics into the same place as everything else you monitor. Resources are discovered across the whole subscription, so a VM created this morning is on a dashboard this morning. And because Azure Cost Management is one of the services we read, your spend sits on the same timeline as the load that caused it.
Coverage
What Bleemeo Reads from Azure
Seven service types, discovered automatically across your subscription. Each one gets its own dashboard.
Virtual Machines
CPU, memory, disk throughput and IOPS, and network traffic in both directions — polled every minute.
- CPU and memory used, as a percentage
- Read and write throughput and operations
- Network bits sent and received
- CPU credit balance on burstable B-series VMs
SQL Database
The metrics you actually alert on for a managed database: pressure, capacity and connections.
- CPU and memory utilisation
- Storage used against the limit
- Successful and failed connections
- Polled every minute
Cosmos DB
Request volume and request unit consumption, so provisioned throughput can be sized on evidence.
- Total requests
- Request units consumed
- Per-account discovery
- Polled every minute
Load Balancer
Availability plus the counters that explain a saturated front end before your users do.
- Availability
- Packet and byte counts
- SNAT connection usage
- Polled every minute
Blob Storage
Capacity and transactions per storage account, on the hourly cadence Azure itself publishes them.
- Transactions and availability
- Capacity used
- Object and file counts
- Polled hourly
Function Apps
Executions, failures and latency — the three numbers that tell you whether a serverless workload is healthy.
- Executions and errors
- Requests served
- Response time
- Polled every minute
Cost Management
Your Azure spend as a metric, on the same charts as the infrastructure that generates it.
- Amortised cost of the last complete day
- Month-to-date cost
- Forecast for the end of the month
- Reservations spread across their term
Setup
Four Steps, No Agent on Azure
Nothing is installed inside your Azure resources. Bleemeo calls the Azure Monitor API from outside, with a role that can only read.
Register an app in Microsoft Entra ID
Create a single-tenant app registration in your own tenant — call it "Bleemeo Azure Monitoring" — and keep its Tenant ID and Client ID. It exists only so Bleemeo has an identity you control and can revoke.
Register the Microsoft.Insights provider
On the subscription you want to monitor, make sure the Microsoft.Insights resource provider is registered. This is what exposes Azure Monitor metrics to the API.
Grant Monitoring Reader
Assign the built-in Monitoring Reader role to that app, scoped to the subscription. It is read-only by construction: Bleemeo can list resources and read metrics, and cannot start, stop, resize or delete anything.
Enter the credentials in Bleemeo
Paste the Tenant ID, Subscription ID, Client ID and client secret into the Cloud Provider page, then toggle on the services you want. Discovery runs immediately and the dashboards appear as resources are found.
Why teams do it this way
One Platform, Not One More Console
Hybrid by default
Azure VMs read through Azure Monitor, on-premises servers read by the Glouton agent, containers read from the runtime socket — all in the same dashboards, with the same alert rules and the same notification channels. There is no "Azure view" to switch to.
Read-only, and revocable
The integration holds the Monitoring Reader role on one subscription, through an app registration that lives in your tenant. You can see exactly what it can reach, and remove it in one click without touching Bleemeo.
Cost on the same timeline as load
Amortised daily cost, month-to-date and the end-of-month forecast are metrics like any other, so you can put spend next to the traffic that drove it and alert on a forecast rather than discover it on the invoice.
Batched API calls
Azure Monitor bills per query, and it accepts up to 50 resources of the same type and region per call. Bleemeo batches accordingly, so a fleet of fifty VMs costs about the same to poll as one — roughly $0.43 a month, inside the Azure free tier for most accounts.
Comparison
Azure Monitor Alone vs Azure Monitor Through Bleemeo
| Feature | Azure Monitor alone | Bleemeo |
|---|---|---|
| Azure resource metrics | Complete, first-party | Read from Azure Monitor, same source |
| Non-Azure servers | Out of scope | Same dashboards via the Glouton agent |
| Dashboard setup | Build your own workbooks | One dashboard per service type, created on discovery |
| Alert rules | Written per resource or per rule scope | Pre-built defaults, applied as resources appear |
| Cost visibility | Separate Cost Management blade | Cost as a metric, next to the load |
| Multi-cloud | Azure only | Azure and AWS side by side |
| Pricing model | Per query, per ingested GB, per alert rule | Per host, with the Azure API cost batched down |
| Data residency | Depends on region and tenant | Stored in the EU, Paris region |
Frequently Asked Questions
Azure monitoring with Bleemeo, in practice
Do I need to install an agent on my Azure VMs?
No. Bleemeo reads Azure Monitor from outside through the API, so nothing is installed on your Azure resources. You can still install the Glouton agent on an Azure VM if you want in-guest detail — process-level metrics, discovered services, logs — but it is a choice, not a requirement.
What permissions does Bleemeo need on my subscription?
One built-in role: Monitoring Reader, scoped to the subscription you want to monitor, granted to an app registration that lives in your own Entra ID tenant. It can list resources and read metrics. It cannot create, modify, start, stop or delete anything, and you can revoke it from the Azure portal at any time.
Which Azure services are supported?
Seven: Virtual Machines, SQL Database, Cosmos DB, Load Balancer, Blob Storage, Function Apps and Cost Management. Each can be toggled on or off independently, and each gets its own dashboard once resources are discovered.
Will this add to my Azure bill?
A little. Azure Monitor charges for metric queries, and Azure includes a free tier worth roughly $10 a month. Because the API accepts up to 50 resources of the same type and region per call, Bleemeo batches its queries: about $0.43 a month per batch of up to 50 VMs, databases, load balancers or Function Apps, and about $0.02 for a batch of storage accounts. Cost Management queries are free.
How often are Azure metrics collected?
Every minute for VMs, SQL Database, Cosmos DB, Load Balancer and Function Apps. Blob Storage is hourly, which is the cadence Azure itself publishes those metrics at. Cost metrics are daily, since that is how Azure Cost Management reports.
Can I monitor Azure and AWS in the same account?
Yes. Both are cloud provider integrations on the same Bleemeo account, and their metrics land in the same dashboards. A single alert can watch an Azure VM and an EC2 instance, and a single application view can span both.
Which plans include Azure monitoring?
Azure monitoring is available on the Starter and Professional plans. See pricing for the details.