Azure Advisor
Azure Advisor is the functionality inside of the Azure portal that generates recommendations from customer data. In SHI One, this feature is referred to as Azure Recommendations.
SHI has developed a multi-cloud governance framework to help organizations achieve governance at scale and accelerate cloud usage in a controlled, secure, compliant, and consistent way. The SHI Cloud Governance Framework is built upon a set of industry best practices, standards, frameworks, and benchmarks. The SHI Cloud Governance Framework can be applied regardless of your maturity, if you’re new to the cloud, or are an existing cloud customer.
Phase 1 of the SHI Cloud Governance Framework helps to establish visibility and awareness of security and compliance issues within the cloud environment to strengthen your overall security posture.
The purpose of this document is to provide a configuration guide for enabling key Azure Advisor and integrating the services with SHI One.
The implementation of the Azure Advisor covered in this guide will strengthen your Azure security posture and establish a set of foundational best practices as further defined in the SHI Cloud Governance Framework.
The integration of these services into SHI One provides a simplified and unified view of this information and ensures that the SHI Cloud Governance Framework Success Program can act as your concierge to help guide you towards a stronger cloud security posture.
The following prerequisites must be met to utilize the SHI One Azure Advisor Integration:
- An active subscription in Microsoft Azure
- The individual performing the steps below must be an Owner to the subscription being delegated
- If you are a Global Admin in Azure, you can also add yourself as an Owner to be able to complete the following steps
Note that Azure GovCloud is not supported in SHI One.
Note that Azure Web Direct subscriptions (a.k.a. Microsoft Online Subscription Program [MOSP]) are not fully supported in SHI One.
- Web Direct subscriptions in SHI One will not display cost reporting or consumption data
- Web Direct subscriptions in SHI One will display data for Recommendations and/or Security & Compliance if you have set up those integrations
This is due to configuration parameters on Microsoft's end which prevent full access to Web Direct subscription data. Azure subscription types can sometimes be changed; reach out to a Microsoft or Azure team and ask if it is possible to change your Web Direct subscription to a different subscription type.
To achieve the goal of strengthening the security posture of your environment, SHI recommends the following two-step process that is detailed later in this document:
- Enable Azure Advisor
- Configure SHI One Integration
Azure Advisor is a Microsoft Azure service that provides recommendations based on your deployed Azure services configuration. By analyzing data from various telemetries, it helps you optimize your Azure configuration using the five pillars of the Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework as a baseline. By leveraging Azure Advisor’s recommendations, you can enhance and refine your Azure services’ cost, security, reliability, operational excellence, and performance.
Cost Optimization
- Azure Advisor’s cost optimization recommendations aim to reduce your Azure spend by identifying idle and underutilized resources
Operational Excellence
- Operational Excellence recommendations provide guidance that enables process and workflow efficiency, resource manageability, and deployment best practices
Performance
- Azure Advisor’s performance recommendations provide guidance on improving the speed and responsiveness of configured and supported workloads
Reliability
- The reliability recommendations Azure Advisor provides aim to increase the availability and resiliency of supported Azure workloads
Security
- Azure Advisor leverages the Azure Security Center platform to provide recommendations that help protect Azure resources
Azure Advisor is enabled on all active Azure subscriptions when you visit the Azure Advisor overview page for the first time.
Click the following link to visit your Azure Advisor Center:
Azure Advisor is available at no additional cost. Azure Advisor aims to help you find cloud cost efficiencies while following Azure best practices.
- Some recommendations can incur costs upon remediation
- Overview:
- Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework:
Once SHI One Azure Advisor is enabled, aggregated findings from Azure Advisor will be visible from within SHI One. The SHI Cloud Governance Framework Customer Success program will guide you through the findings, help you identify priority items, and assist with recommending remediation strategies to strengthen your security posture.
The following section describes the necessary configuration to integrate your Azure Advisor into SHI One and details the permissions necessary to ensure the proper functionality of the Azure Advisor Integration.
To utilize the Azure Advisor Integration to its fullest capabilities, an Azure Marketplace Managed Service Offer must be deployed to every Azure subscription participating in the SHI Cloud Governance Framework Integration with SHI One.
For customers with multiple subscriptions, the following process can be performed on your primary management Azure subscription:
- The individual performing the steps below must be an Admin in SHI One
- The individual performing the following steps must be an Owner of the subscription being delegated
- If you are a Global Admin in Azure, you can add yourself as an Owner to be able to complete the following steps
- The Microsoft.ManagedServices Resource Provider must be registered prior to each subscription(s) onboarded
- The Azure Marketplace Application is only added once per tenant
The Microsoft.ManagedServices Resource Provider must be registered for the subscription(s) being onboarded.
- Log in to the Azure portal with an account that has the Owner role assigned to the subscription
- Navigate to the subscriptions blade and select the subscription being onboarded
- Click Resource providers
- Type Microsoft.ManagedServices
- Ensure the Microsoft.ManagedServices Resource Provider is registered; if not, register the Resource Provider
- Please note this may take 10-15 minutes
- Log in to the Azure portal with an account that has the Owner role assigned to the subscription
- Note: This link takes you directly to SHI’s Cloud Governance Framework offer for Azure; you can also find this offer via the Azure Marketplace or by adding an offer manually to the “Service Providers” area within your Azure Portal
- Select your primary Azure subscription for deployment
- Select the region to run the deployment
- The deployment must be run in one region but it is a global association to the subscription; we recommend using your most common region
- Click Review + create
- Check the confirmation box
- IMPORTANT - If your Create button is not highlighted: There is a bug on this page with some browsers. If the Create button does not highlight after the box is checked, click the Previous button then click Next: Review + create. All previously entered information should be retained and the Create button should now be highlighted.
- Click Create
- You will be redirected to an Azure deployment status page; after the deployment is completed, you will see a link to complete the final step of the configuration
- Click Give your partner access to your subscriptions or resource groups
- For the Service Provider, select SHI
- For the Name, select SHI Cloud Governance Framework (Standard)
- Click Delegate Subscriptions
- Select all applicable subscriptions and click Delegate resources
- Check the confirmation box
- Click Delegate
- You will receive a confirmation message in your Azure Notifications when the deployment is complete
- If there are any errors, please follow up with the SHI resource that provided this documentation
Note that it takes Azure up to 48 hours to grant SHI One access.
When updating the application, you may receive an error message such as the following:
If that is the case, remove the existing delegations first before installing the application.
- Log in to the Azure portal with an account that has the Owner role assigned to the subscription.
- Navigate to Service providers blade by searching for “Service providers”
- Select Service provider offers from the left navigation
- Select the item SHI Cloud Governance Framework (Standard)
- Click Delete
- In SHI One, navigate to Support Center -> New Request -> Service Request
- For Contract, select Azure
- For Issue Type, select Azure - Account Management
- For Issue Sub-Type, select Add-Manage Account/Subscription
- In the subject box, write "Azure Tenant ID/Subscription Mapping Request"
- In the description box, include every Azure Tenant ID/Subscription
- Click Submit
- The Support Team will inform you when the mapping process is complete; you can check the status of your ticket at Support Center -> Requests
- Once the Support Team has confirmed that the mapping process is complete, navigate to Settings -> Integrations
- Verify that the slider on the right of each Azure Integration box is orange/activated
- Click on every Azure Integration box to verify that every subscription's slider is orange/activated
Note that it takes Azure up to 48 hours to start sending data to SHI One.
The hourglass icon appears when Azure has not yet sent data to SHI One. It can take up to 48 hours after activating a subscription for Azure to start sending data to SHI One.
If it has been more than 48 hours since activating a subscription and the hourglass icon is still there, you can submit a support request for SHI to manually request data from Azure on your behalf. Perform the following steps:
- In SHI One, navigate to Support Center -> New Request -> Service Request
- For Contract, select Azure
- For Cloud Account, select the affected subscription
- For Issue Type, select Azure - Account Management
- For Issue Sub-Type, select Subscription Management
- In the subject box, write "Azure Subscription Manual Sync Request"
- In the description box, include the name and ID of every Azure subscription that has an hourglass icon next to it and include screenshots if possible
- Click Submit
The Support Team will inform you when the manual sync has been performed; you can check the status of your support request at Support Center -> Requests.
The red exclamation mark appears when there is an error with a subscription. Subscriptions in error are displayed with a message below explaining the nature of the error.
Because there are many error causes and possibilities, there is no way to list all potential methods of rectifying an error. Often the fastest method is to deactivate the affected subscription(s) and then perform this document's delegation process again. If that doesn't solve the problem, submit a support request in SHI One; make sure to include the name and ID of every subscription in error and include screenshots if possible.
