Greetings all and thank you in advance for contributing.

Rather than posting a few different posts, I am option for asking for a few different opinions in at the same time. Some may have an opinion on all or only part. Either is truly helpful.

Topic Reporting

I am not too thrilled right now with my options for "reporting" in general within Azure. By this i mean both for good metrics on performance but also for and right now primarily for costs. I am seeking to build a billing dashboard. That i can send managers to for up to date cost list and graph, maybe even a projection. I know within the azure portal there is some pieces of that. However I want to do 2 things.

1. Create a managerial style dashboard (easy to understand and pretty)
2. A regular email pdf or similar with the details.

I have played with some of the other pieces that are out there. clouddyn, ultimate dashboards etc. I have not found one yet that really speaks to me without a fair amount of either compromise or effort. What is everyone doing? Does anyone else have this same problem or need? Anyone solving it?

Topic Containers and Service Fabric.

Based on what I am reading about being able to implement containers. I am very much interested in adding container support to at least a couple of the modules we run in Azure. It seems super easy to add container support to the application. But the underlying items that you can chose to implement in order to support them is somewhat nebulous or confusing.

It really seems that using Docker is the way to go. It very easily enables you within visual studio to add support and install it on your developers desktop etc etc. From what i can tell, docket in one edition is free if you don't want support etc. (am i right?) You would want to run your set of docker containers in a VM cluster. (it uses scale sets i think) You can also setup Azure Service fabric as some of the underlying infrastructure You can setup the Azure Container Service You can setup Azure Web App for containers. If you only have one you can use Azure Container instances. You can use Docker EE for Azure (seems pricey) Then you can choose an orchestrator. Kubernetes etc.

So many very similar options. But getting started what did you do? On the surface it seems like if you are rolling out a cluster of VMs just to run some containers. You may be reducing the benefit or value no?

Finally Devops.

As you roll-out updates to applications in Azure. (mine are mostly web based) What have you found to work really well? I want to automate as much as possible and obviously minimize and necessary unavailability. Basically I am looking at some level of implement an update in parallel to production and once validated flip them.

Thanks for reading this far and I look forward to any thoughts