target audience

Connection Monitor is a powerful cloud-native diagnostic tool within Azure Network Watcher used to continuously monitor, analyze, and troubleshoot network connectivity. It provides end-to-end visibility across cloud infrastructures, on-premises data centers, and hybrid network architectures. 🌟 Key Capabilities

Continuous Hybrid Probing: Measures connectivity from Azure VMs, Virtual Machine Scale Sets, and on-premises endpoints using lightweight monitoring agents.

Multi-Protocol Synthetic Traffic: Simulates user and application behavior using TCP, ICMP, and HTTP/HTTPS streams to test connectivity.

Visual Topology Mapping: Provides a hop-by-hop end-to-end visualization of the network path. It calls out precisely where packet drops or latency spikes occur.

Granular Metrics & Alerts: Tracks real-time network parameters, including average round-trip time (RTT), packet loss percentages, and failed test checks. 🏗️ Core Architecture Components

To set up a Connection Monitor, you configure three primary elements:

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Connection Monitor │ │ ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ Test Group │ │ │ │ ┌───────────┐ ┌──────────────┐ ┌───┐ │ │ │ │ │ Sources │ ───> │ Test Configs │ ───> │Des│ │ │ │ │ └───────────┘ └──────────────┘ └───┘ │ │ │ └──────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Sources (Endpoints): Virtual machines, subnets, or Arc-enabled servers generating synthetic traffic.

Test Configurations: Defined rules dictating the network protocol, frequency of checks (e.g., every 30 seconds), target port, and performance thresholds.

Destinations (Endpoints): Target destinations such as other VMs, external custom URLs, Microsoft 365 services, or static IPv4/IPv6 addresses.

Test Groups: Logical collections that bind specific sources, test setups, and destination groups together. 🛠️ Common Use Cases Connection Monitor Overview – Azure Network Watcher