Azure Monitor vs Kibana

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Azure Monitor vs Kibana: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will discuss the key differences between Azure Monitor and Kibana. Azure Monitor is a comprehensive monitoring solution provided by Microsoft for monitoring resources and applications hosted on the Azure cloud platform. On the other hand, Kibana is an open-source data visualization and exploration tool, primarily used for analyzing and visualizing data stored in Elasticsearch.

  1. Data Source: Azure Monitor primarily collects monitoring data from the resources hosted on Azure, such as virtual machines, containers, and Azure services like Azure App Service or Azure SQL Database. It collects and analyzes performance metrics, logs, and diagnostic telemetry data. On the other hand, Kibana requires Elasticsearch as the data source. It is designed specifically to work with Elasticsearch to visualize and analyze data stored in Elasticsearch indices.

  2. Integration with Azure Ecosystem: Azure Monitor is tightly integrated with the entire Azure ecosystem. It seamlessly integrates with other Azure services and provides insights into Azure resources and services. It can also leverage Azure Automation, Azure Functions, and Log Analytics to automate tasks and trigger actions based on monitoring data. In contrast, while Kibana can be used with Elasticsearch on the Azure platform, it does not have the same level of native integration with other Azure services as Azure Monitor.

  3. Built-in Alerting and Action Groups: Azure Monitor provides built-in alerting capabilities, allowing users to create alerts based on customized conditions and thresholds. It also supports action groups, which enable users to define a list of actions to be taken when an alert is triggered, such as sending notifications or running automated remediation tasks. Kibana, on the other hand, does not have built-in alerting capabilities. It focuses more on data visualization and exploration.

  4. Log Analytics and Query Language: Azure Monitor leverages Log Analytics, which provides powerful query and analysis capabilities for log and performance data collected by Azure Monitor. It uses a proprietary query language called Kusto Query Language (KQL) to retrieve and analyze data. Kibana, on the other hand, uses its own query language called Elasticsearch Query DSL. It provides a flexible and powerful way to search and analyze data stored in Elasticsearch indices.

  5. Visualization and Dashboards: Kibana is known for its extensive capabilities for data visualization and creating interactive dashboards. It provides a wide range of visualization options, including bar charts, line charts, pie charts, and maps, to help users explore and present their data effectively. Azure Monitor also provides visualization capabilities, but they are more focused on monitoring specific Azure resources and services, rather than providing a comprehensive range of data visualization options like Kibana.

  6. Ease of Use and Learning Curve: Azure Monitor is designed to be user-friendly and provides a familiar interface for users familiar with the Azure portal and services. It provides predefined monitoring solutions and templates that can be easily configured and deployed. Kibana, on the other hand, has a steeper learning curve and requires some level of expertise in Elasticsearch and data analysis. It requires users to define their own indices and mappings before being able to visualize and analyze data effectively.

In summary, Azure Monitor is a comprehensive monitoring solution tightly integrated with the Azure ecosystem, whereas Kibana is an open-source data visualization tool primarily used with Elasticsearch. Azure Monitor collects monitoring data from Azure resources, while Kibana requires Elasticsearch as the data source. Azure Monitor provides built-in alerting and integration with other Azure services, whereas Kibana focuses more on data visualization and exploration. Azure Monitor uses Log Analytics and Kusto Query Language for data analysis, while Kibana uses Elasticsearch Query DSL. Kibana offers extensive visualization capabilities, while Azure Monitor provides more resource-specific monitoring. Azure Monitor is user-friendly with predefined solutions, while Kibana has a steeper learning curve.

Advice on Azure Monitor and Kibana
Needs advice
on
GrafanaGrafana
and
KibanaKibana

From a StackShare Community member: “We need better analytics & insights into our Elasticsearch cluster. Grafana, which ships with advanced support for Elasticsearch, looks great but isn’t officially supported/endorsed by Elastic. Kibana, on the other hand, is made and supported by Elastic. I’m wondering what people suggest in this situation."

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Replies (7)
Recommends
on
GrafanaGrafana
at

For our Predictive Analytics platform, we have used both Grafana and Kibana

Kibana has predictions and ML algorithms support, so if you need them, you may be better off with Kibana . The multi-variate analysis features it provide are very unique (not available in Grafana).

For everything else, definitely Grafana . Especially the number of supported data sources, and plugins clearly makes Grafana a winner (in just visualization and reporting sense). Creating your own plugin is also very easy. The top pros of Grafana (which it does better than Kibana ) are:

  • Creating and organizing visualization panels
  • Templating the panels on dashboards for repetetive tasks
  • Realtime monitoring, filtering of charts based on conditions and variables
  • Export / Import in JSON format (that allows you to version and save your dashboard as part of git)
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Recommends
on
KibanaKibana

I use both Kibana and Grafana on my workplace: Kibana for logging and Grafana for monitoring. Since you already work with Elasticsearch, I think Kibana is the safest choice in terms of ease of use and variety of messages it can manage, while Grafana has still (in my opinion) a strong link to metrics

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Bram Verdonck
Recommends
on
GrafanaGrafana
at

After looking for a way to monitor or at least get a better overview of our infrastructure, we found out that Grafana (which I previously only used in ELK stacks) has a plugin available to fully integrate with Amazon CloudWatch . Which makes it way better for our use-case than the offer of the different competitors (most of them are even paid). There is also a CloudFlare plugin available, the platform we use to serve our DNS requests. Although we are a big fan of https://smashing.github.io/ (previously dashing), for now we are starting with Grafana .

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Recommends
on
KibanaKibana

I use Kibana because it ships with the ELK stack. I don't find it as powerful as Splunk however it is light years above grepping through log files. We previously used Grafana but found it to be annoying to maintain a separate tool outside of the ELK stack. We were able to get everything we needed from Kibana.

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Recommends
on
KibanaKibana

Kibana should be sufficient in this architecture for decent analytics, if stronger metrics is needed then combine with Grafana. Datadog also offers nice overview but there's no need for it in this case unless you need more monitoring and alerting (and more technicalities).

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Recommends
on
GrafanaGrafana

I use Grafana because it is without a doubt the best way to visualize metrics

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Povilas Brilius
PHP Web Developer at GroundIn Software · | 0 upvotes · 587K views
Recommends
on
KibanaKibana
at

@Kibana, of course, because @Grafana looks like amateur sort of solution, crammed with query builder grouping aggregates, but in essence, as recommended by CERN - KIbana is the corporate (startup vectored) decision.

Furthermore, @Kibana comes with complexity adhering ELK stack, whereas @InfluxDB + @Grafana & co. recently have become sophisticated development conglomerate instead of advancing towards a understandable installation step by step inheritance.

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Pros of Azure Monitor
Pros of Kibana
    Be the first to leave a pro
    • 88
      Easy to setup
    • 64
      Free
    • 45
      Can search text
    • 21
      Has pie chart
    • 13
      X-axis is not restricted to timestamp
    • 9
      Easy queries and is a good way to view logs
    • 6
      Supports Plugins
    • 4
      Dev Tools
    • 3
      Can build dashboards
    • 3
      More "user-friendly"
    • 2
      Out-of-Box Dashboards/Analytics for Metrics/Heartbeat
    • 2
      Easy to drill-down
    • 1
      Up and running

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    Cons of Azure Monitor
    Cons of Kibana
      Be the first to leave a con
      • 6
        Unintuituve
      • 4
        Elasticsearch is huge
      • 3
        Hardweight UI
      • 3
        Works on top of elastic only

      Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions