We’re architecting alerting for a large-scale IoT deployment (15K+ devices) and evaluating two approaches: using the built-in alerting features in our visualization dashboard (Power BI with custom visuals) versus Azure Monitor native alerts.
Our viz-dashboard has alerting capabilities - it can trigger alerts based on dashboard queries and send notifications. But I’m wondering if Azure Monitor is the better foundation for enterprise alerting strategy. Key considerations are alert latency and visualization integration, how well each integrates with our incident management system (ServiceNow), and the level of customization and automation we can achieve.
What have others found works best at scale? Are there scenarios where dashboard-based alerting makes more sense than Azure Monitor, or should we standardize on Azure Monitor for all IoT alerts?
We went through this evaluation last year. Azure Monitor is definitely more robust for production alerting. Dashboard-based alerts are fine for ad-hoc monitoring, but they lack the reliability, action groups, and integration capabilities you need for enterprise incident management. We use dashboards for visualization only and Azure Monitor for all operational alerts.
Integration with incident management is where Azure Monitor really shines. The action groups integrate natively with ServiceNow, PagerDuty, and other ITSM tools. Dashboard alerts usually require custom webhooks and middleware to achieve the same thing. The automation possibilities are also much richer - Azure Monitor can trigger Logic Apps, Functions, or Runbooks directly from alert rules.
Customization is another key factor. Azure Monitor alert rules use KQL which is extremely powerful for complex conditions across multiple data sources. Dashboard alerts are limited to what the visualization tool supports. However, dashboard alerts can be easier for business users to configure without deep technical knowledge. Consider your team’s skill sets when deciding.