Includes Basic Services +

Azure VM Management (up to OS level)

The following describes the basic actions Altron Karabina will perform on Azure instances attached to an Azure profile, and Azure VM management. This will  be performed in accordance with the [Customer Name]’s Change Management process. 

• Add and remove one or more Azure subscriptions by using the VMM console.
• Provide a list view with details and status of all role instances in all deployments in that subscription.
• Perform the following basic actions on the instances, when required:
  • Start
  • Stop
  • Shutdown
  • Restart
  • Connect via RDP

Assessment of Azure Environment

Altron Karabina will perform a quarterly Azure Environment Assessment and will audit your Azure environment to evaluate the design and operational effectiveness in terms of security and governance, performance and optimisation, scalability and efficient usage.

Monitor Native Azure Platform Service

Altron Karabina will utilize Azure Monitor which is a comprehensive native monitoring service provided by Azure as part of its cloud platform for monitoring. Azure Monitor collects and analyses telemetry data from applications. It comprises several tools, each providing various types of support from an application-monitoring perspective. The main ones are:

• Azure Monitor for VMs and Azure Monitor for Containers provide monitoring of the infrastructure components.
• Azure Application Insights enable tracing of user requests as they travel through an application, and they have the ability to collect and capture telemetry that is emitted from applications. Azure Application Insights also provide features such as multistep web tests and URL ping tests, which enable synthetic monitoring capabilities.
• Azure Monitor Alerts provide a mechanism to trigger an action based on the evaluation of a metric captured in Azure Application Insights and Azure Monitor

Monitor Health and Platform Service Availability

Azure Service Health notifies you about Azure service incidents and planned maintenance. Altron Karabina will take action, together with the [Customer Name]’s Change Management process to mitigate downtime. We will configure customizable cloud alerts and use a personalized dashboard to analyse health issues, monitor the impact to your cloud resources, get guidance and support, and share details and updates.

Monitor Azure Compute and Storage Resources

As soon as Azure resource are created, Azure Monitor is enabled and starts collecting metrics and activity logs. With some configuration, we can gather additional monitoring data and enable additional features. The Azure Monitor data platform is made up of Metrics and Logs.

Azure Monitor data collection

• Azure Monitor Metrics stores numeric data from monitored resources into a time series database. The metric database is automatically created for each Azure subscription. We use metrics explorer to analyse data from Azure Monitor Metrics.
• Azure Monitor Logs collects logs and performance data where they can be retrieved and analysed in a different way using log queries. We will create a Log Analytics workspace to collect log data. 

​​

Monitor data from Azure resources

While resources from different Azure services have different monitoring requirements, they generate monitoring data in the same formats so that we can use the same Azure Monitor tools to analyse all Azure resources.

Diagnostic settings define where resource logs and metrics for a particular resource should be sent. Possible destinations are:

• Activity log - Subscription level events that track operations for each Azure resource, for example creating a new resource or starting a virtual machine. Activity log events are automatically generated and collected for viewing in the Azure portal. We will create a diagnostic setting to send the Activity log to Azure Monitor Logs.

• Platform metrics - Numerical values that are automatically collected at regular intervals and describe some aspect of a resource at a particular time. Platform metrics are automatically generated and collected in Azure Monitor Metrics.

• Resource logs - Provide insight into operations that were performed by an Azure resource, for example getting a secret from a Key Vault or making a request to a database. Resource logs are generated automatically, however, we will create a diagnostic setting to send them to Azure Monitor Logs.

• Virtual machine guest metrics and logs - Performance and log data from the guest operating system of Azure virtual machines. We will install an agent on the virtual machine to collect this data and send it to Azure Monitor Metrics and Azure Monitor Logs.

Includes all Essentials & Basics Services +

Azure Tenant Management

Altron Karabina understands that the unprecedented levels of complexity and accelerating rates of change demand and the operating model shift, as modern enterprises become more dependent of technology.

We believe in delivering a platform that support the shift of managing your Azure tenant, to a more business-driven, cost saving  and application focused model. Our model provides a faster view of your environment, incorporating compliance, availability, quality, and security. With automation and analytics, we can provide you with pro-active actionable insights, which lead to effective problem management and cost management.

In summary, our Azure tenant Managed service;

• Enables your IT department to leverage an advanced cloud service to deliver more value with less time and effort
• Allows you to adopt a product-centric view where application teams and business users are treated as customers, and use agile techniques to develop governance practices that meet the pace of customer demands
• Shift your IT departments focus to applications by combining the monitoring tool that provides actionable insights, enable observability, and focus on customer experience. This shift helps improves response efficiency and alert relevance
• Increasing self-service, autonomy and decentralization will provide mature and multidisciplined governance and ITSM practices.

Transformation (Change Management)

As an addition Altron will assist the [Customer Name] to build a digital transformation timeline. We understand that at the core of digital transformation, it involves complex change management efforts and technical change. The Transformation projects can include;

• Migration & Modernization
  • The Migration as priority should minimize conflicts with existing innovation commitments
  • Operation Modernization
  • This complements and support primary migration effort
• Advanced Modernization
  • With post-migration and operational improvements, the team will have sufficient data to perform deeper modernization of complex architectures
• Innovation and growth
  • All prior horizons will produce a long list of new innovations as the central IT and cloud adoption teams create tighter collaborations and build out automation assets

Implementation of the Azure Native toolset within Azure Subscription

• Azure Advisor
• Azure cost management
  • Budgets
  • Quotas
  • Billing consumption reports
• Azure Security Center
  • Low risk
  • Medium risk
  • High risk
• Log Analytics
  • Log analytics account
  • Logging all activities to log analytics
  • Backup and storage of logs and retention of logs
• Azure Network Monitor
  • Uptime monitoring with alerting in the event of failures

Tenant and Subscription Advisory that ensure the Governance Requirements is being maintained

Tenant Design and Configuration that ensures our Customer’s Azure Governance Policy is being maintained.

• Tenant and Subscription advisory
• Governance
  • Policies
  • Blueprints
  • Multi Factor Authentication
  • Identity synchronization
  • Role based access control
• Network layer
  • Express Route / S2S VPN
  • Virtual network
  • Subnets
  • Virtual network peering
  • Network security Groups
• Business continuity
  • Azure site recovery services
  • High Availability sets
  • Load Balancers

Azure Management Groups

• Design and implement Azure Management group
• Assign and apply Azure Group Policies and definitions based on the Management Group structures
• Assign and apply Azure CIS security Blueprint

Cloud Compute and Storage Management

Cloud compute and storage management

• Compute
  • Utilization monitoring
    • Right sizing
    • Auto shut down
    • Updates and patch management
    • Reserved instances
  • Storage
    • Manage disassociated storage disks
    • Design and maintain Storage account
    • Optimize storage according to utilization

Cost Optimization

Cost optimization is an ongoing exercise in any Azure Tenant and Subscription. Altron Karabina provides monthly guidance on opportunities within the Tenant and Subscriptions to reduce the monthly consumption costs of the Azure environment.

• Utilization monitoring
• Right sizing
• Auto shutdown of non-production services in DEV and UAT
• Reserved instances
• Azure Hybrid Use Benefits
• Transformation from Infrastructure as a service to Software and Platform as a service
• Budget management and alerting

Workload Automation

• Runbook creation and maintenance
• Auto-Shutdown of non-production services

Secure Score improvements

• Advising and implementing Azure Advisory and Azure Security Center recommendations

Azure Backup services

• Design and implement backup policies
• Configure retention policies in alignment with Governance requirements
• Manage backup alerts and failures
• Conduct test restores on operating system and file level

Disaster recovery services

• Implement Azure site recovery services
• Conduct test failover tests
• Assist with full failover in the event of a disaster

Resource inventory and Azure network Diagrams

• Maintain Azure inventory of all resources per subscription
• Maintain azure network diagram

Identify and Access Management

• Ownership and management of Tenant and Subscription Admin accounts (Owner, contributor, Global Admin) with password vaulting and password rotation
• Azure AD - RBAC \ IAM – Delegated Access to Data Admins
• Azure - RBAC \ IAM – Resource Groups, Resources and Services
• Service Principles, Managed and User Managed Identities
• Privileged Identity Management (PIM)
• Conditional Access, MFA, Access Reviews
• Protecting Microsoft 365 from on-premises attacks
• Implement Microsoft Best Practice Guidelines for Privileged Access Accounts
• Zero Trust and Assumed breach strategies

Monthly Reporting Graphs

• Azure Resource Inventory Report

​

• Advisory Report

• Security Centre

• Support 8am – 5pm Business days

• 24/7 for P1 incidents