Azure Network Watcher

In this Azure article, we will discuss Azure Network Watcher, its Features, and different methods to use it, along with best practices and pricing details.

What Is Azure Network Watcher?

Azure Network Watcher is a native Azure service designed to monitor, diagnose, and gain insights into your Azure Virtual Network (VNet) resources. It provides a suite of tools that help you troubleshoot connectivity issues, analyze traffic flows, and optimize network performance in real-time.

Think of Azure Network Watcher as your cloud network’s health monitor.

Azure Network Watcher is an excellent tool that helps you with different tools for monitoring and diagnosing different issues related to your network. It provides you with the logs for the resources that belong to your virtual network.

It also helps you to view metrics and mainly provides you the opportunity to monitor your Azure Virtual Networks, your Virtual Machines (VM), Load Balancers, your application Gateways, etc., and helps you to repair in case of any issues concerning the networks.

Why Use Azure Network Watcher?

Proactive Monitoring: Detect and resolve network issues before they affect end-users.
Security Analysis: Inspect network traffic and security group rules to identify vulnerabilities.
Performance Optimization: Analyze latency and throughput to optimize cloud applications.
Compliance: Maintain logs and diagnostics for audit and compliance purposes.
Cost Efficiency: Prevent costly downtime and inefficient network configurations.

Azure Network Watcher Features

Below is the list of key features of Azure Network Watcher.

Better Monitoring Capability

Azure Network Watcher helps you monitor various endpoints, VMs, IPv4 addresses, FQDNs, and more. You can easily get a clear picture of the communication, network issues, latency, etc.

Tools for diagnosing

It provides various diagnostic tools to help you identify issues related to your virtual network, including network traffic, routing problems within your VM, outbound connections from your Virtual Machine, and issues with your Azure Virtual Network Gateway. Additionally, it enables you to capture packets from or to your Virtual Machine.

View Metrics

You can view metrics or summaries of the network resources you have created or deployed within your Azure subscription, including resource names, current limits, and usage within your subscription or region.

Viewing The Logs

Azure Network Watcher allows you to view and analyze the logs.

With the help of the NSG flow log, you can log the IP address of your source and destination, the protocol, and the port details, etc.

You can enable logging for various network resources, including load balancers, application gateways, and virtual network gateways.

It is easy to view the logs with the help of Power BI and the traffic analytics feature, where you will get a perfect visualization of your NSG flow logs.

Using Azure Network Watcher: Different Methods

1. Packet Capture

Packet capture lets you collect network traffic packets from a VM’s NIC for deep packet inspection.

How to Use Packet Capture

Define filters (e.g., source/destination IP, port).
Start the capture session.
Download and analyze the .pcap file with tools like Wireshark.

2. IP Flow Verify

IP Flow Verify checks whether traffic is allowed or denied based on NSG rules.

Example Use Case

If a user in New York cannot access a VM in Virginia, run IP Flow Verify to check if NSG rules are blocking the traffic.

3. Next Hop

Next Hop helps you determine the next network device a packet will traverse when sent from a VM.

Why It’s Useful

Troubleshoot routing issues.
Verify traffic flow paths.

4. Security Group View

This feature visualizes effective NSG rules applied to a VM or subnet, showing which rules allow or block traffic.

5. Connection Monitor

Connection Monitor continuously tests end-to-end connectivity between Azure resources or from Azure to on-premises.

Benefits

Detect connectivity degradation.
Alert on failures.
Visualize connection paths.

6. Network Performance Monitor

Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is an advanced feature that measures latency, packet loss, and network health across Azure regions and on-premises sites.

Creating Azure Network Watcher

Follow the steps below to create an Azure Network Watcher