Get started with Azure Advisor

Learn how to access Advisor through the Azure portal, get and manage recommendations, and configure Advisor settings.

Open Advisor

To access Azure Advisor, sign in to the Azure portal. From there, select the Advisor icon at the top of the page, use the search bar at the top to search for Advisor, or use the left navigation pane Advisor link.
The Advisor Overview page opens by default.

View the Advisor dashboard

See personalized and actionable recommendations on the Advisor Overview page.

• The links at the top offer options for Feedback, downloading recommendations as comma-separated or PDFs, and a quick-link to Advisor Workbooks.
• The blue filter buttons below them focus the recommendations.
• The tiles represent the different recommendation categories and include your current score in that category.
• The Get started link takes you to options for direct access to Advisor workbooks, recommendations, and the Well Architected Framework main page.

Filter and access recommendations

The tiles on the Advisor Overview page show the different categories of recommendations for all the subscriptions that you have access to, by default.

You can filter the display using the buttons at the top of the page:

• Subscription: Choose All for Advisor recommendations on all subscriptions. Alternatively, select specific subscriptions. Apply changes by clicking outside of the button.
• Recommendation Status: Active (the default, recommendations not postponed or dismissed), Postponed or Dismissed. Apply changes by clicking outside of the button.
• Resource Group: Choose All (the default) or specific resource groups. Apply changes by clicking outside of the button.
• Type: Choose All (the default) or specific resources. Apply changes by clicking outside of the button.
• For more advanced filtering, select Add filter.

To display a specific list of recommendations, select a category tile.

Each tile provides information about the recommendations for that category:

• Your overall score for the category.
• The total number of recommendations for the category, and the specific number per impact.
• The number of impacted resources by the recommendations.

For detailed graphics and information on your Advisor score, see Optimize Azure workloads by using Advisor score.

Get recommendation details and solution options

View recommendation details – such as the recommended actions and impacted resources – and the solution options, including postponing or dismissing a recommendation.

1. To review details of a recommendation, including the affected resources, open the recommendation list for a category and then select the Description or the Impacted resources link for a specific recommendation. The following screenshot shows a Reliability recommendation details page.

   

2. To see action details, select a Recommended actions link. The Azure page where you can act opens. Alternatively, open a page to the affected resources to take the recommended action (the two pages might be the same).

   Understand the recommendation before you act by clicking the Learn more link on the recommended action page, or at the top of the recommendations details page.

3. You can postpone the recommendation.

   

   You can't dismiss the recommendation without certain privileges. For information on permissions, see Permissions in Azure Advisor.

Download recommendations

To download your recommendations, select Download as CSV or Download as PDF on the action bar at the top of any recommendation list or details page. The download option respects any filters you applied to Advisor. If you select the download option while viewing a specific recommendation category or recommendation, the downloaded summary only includes information for that category or recommendation.

Configure recommendations

You can exclude subscriptions or resources, such as 'test' resources, from Advisor recommendations and configure Advisor to generate recommendations only for specific subscriptions and resource groups.

From any Azure Advisor page, select Configuration in the left navigation pane. The Advisor Configuration page opens with the Resources tab selected, by default.

Use the Resources tab to select or unselect subscriptions for Advisor recommendations. When ready, select Apply. The page refreshes.

Use the VM/VMSS right sizing tab to adjust Advisor virtual machine (VM) and virtual machine scale sets (VMSS) recommendations. Specifically, you can set up a filter for each subscription to only show recommendations for machines with certain CPU utilization. This setting filters recommendations by machine, but doesn't change how they're generated. Follow these steps.

1. Select the subscriptions you’d like to set up a filter for average CPU utilization, and then select Edit. Not all subscriptions can be edited for VM/VMSS right sizing and certain privileges are required; for more information on permissions, see Permissions in Azure Advisor.

2. Select the desired average CPU utilization value and select Apply. It can take up to 24 hours for the new settings to be reflected in recommendations.

Next steps

To learn more about Advisor, see:

• Introduction to Azure Advisor
• Advisor Cost recommendations
• Advisor Security recommendations
• Advisor Reliability recommendations
• Advisor Operational Excellence recommendations
• Advisor Performance recommendations