CNS Blog

Azure Advisor: Your Built-In Guide to Cloud Optimisation

Written by Alex Weeks | 11/17/25 12:36 AM

Modern cloud environments present unique challenges when it comes to managing cost, performance, security and continuity in an ever-evolving platform — that's where Azure Advisor comes in.
Azure Advisor acts like a built-in cloud consultant that continuously assesses your Azure environment and offers customised, actionable recommendations to optimize it — all free of charge.

 

What is Azure Advisor?

 

Azure Advisor analyses your deployed resources and usage patterns, then provides guidance across five key areas:

  • High Availability
  • Security
  • Performance
  • Cost
  • Operational Excellence

 

Azure Advisor real-time insights based on your actual usage — no guesswork, no generic tips. These insights can be a valuable input to broader Governance, Risk & Compliance initiatives as well.

So, what are the key features, and why should you care?

 

Service retirement warnings:

 

Azure evolves rapidly. Services are updated, improved — and sometimes retired. Azure Advisor gives a report showing the services or SKUs that Microsoft plans to deprecate.

  • No more surprises or missed advisories. When a service you rely on suddenly is set to be retired, you'll know!
  • Helps you plan migrations or replacements well in advance.
  • Includes links to documentation and recommended alternatives.

For example, did you know Microsoft is retiring TLS 1.0 & 1.1? Do you know all of the services you have that still use TLS 1.0? Azure Advisor shows all of the services using TLS and the retirement date for each of them.

Cost Optimisation: Identify underutilised resources, idle VMs, or oversized services. Azure Advisor helps reduce waste by suggesting:

  • Right-sizing recommendations
  • Reserved instance purchases
  • Unused resource cleanups

Great for teams trying to control cloud sprawl or justify spend.

 

Performance recommendations:

 

Improve your app responsiveness and scalability by fixing:

  • CPU or memory bottlenecks
  • Improper load balancer configurations
  • Networking constraints

And it’s all backed by telemetry from your actual usage.

 

Security enhancements

 

Azure Advisor integrates with Microsoft Defender for Cloud to provide actionable security tips.

  • Enable threat detection
  • Apply missing security policies
  • Remediate misconfigured services

It won’t just scare you with alerts — it tells you exactly what to fix and how. Or you can leverage the CNS team to help you.

 

High availability and resiliency

 

Azure Advisor checks for:

  • Single points of failure
  • Unpaired Availability Sets/Zones
  • Unprotected storage accounts or disks

Perfect for teams building toward 99.9%+ uptime goals.

 

Why it matters for IT teams

 

In environments with dozens (or hundreds) of services running, small oversights add up. Using Azure Advisor:

  • Reduces unexpected downtime
  • Cuts wasted spend
  • Improves security posture
  • Keeps your stack aligned with Azure’s roadmap

The best part is that Azure Advisor does all of this automatically, with no agent required and no extra cost.

 

 

Final thoughts

 

Cloud moves fast. Azure Advisor helps you stay ahead of that pace — especially when it comes to avoiding service retirement disruptions. Instead of scrambling when a legacy SKU gets deprecated, you'll have a plan.

If you're not using Azure Advisor yet, now’s the time. It’s available in the Azure Portal under “Advisor”, and it only takes a few clicks to start reviewing your recommendations.

 

As a longstanding Microsoft Solutions Specialist, our Microsoft Azure Cloud Services empower you to harness the full potential of cloud technology for unparalleled scalability, security and performance.