An Azure Native path to New Relic Intelligent Observability for AKS
AKS environments are dynamic by design. Applications can span clusters, namespaces, nodes, pods, and containers, while workloads scale and change continuously. Obtaining consistent visibility often requires platform teams to deploy and maintain monitoring components separately on every cluster.
Azure Native New Relic Service simplifies this process by integrating New Relic onboarding and management into Azure. Customers can already use the service to:
- Create a new New Relic account or link an existing account from Azure.
- Configure the forwarding of Azure platform metrics and logs to New Relic.
- View the monitoring status of Azure resources.
- Consolidate procurement and eligible New Relic charges through Azure Marketplace.
- Monitor multiple Azure subscriptions through a single New Relic resource.
With AKS extension support, customers can now extend this native management experience to their Kubernetes clusters.
Install the New Relic integration from the Azure portal
The new experience follows the same simple model used by Azure Native integrations for other compute resources.
From an Azure Native New Relic Service resource, customers can navigate to New Relic account config > Azure Kubernetes Services, select an eligible AKS cluster, and choose Install Extension. Azure then deploys the New Relic Kubernetes integration by using the AKS cluster extensions framework.
After deployment completes, the portal displays the installation status for the cluster. Customers can return to the same experience to review the status or select Uninstall Extension when monitoring is no longer required.
AKS cluster extensions provide an Azure Resource Manager-based approach for installing and managing services on AKS. This gives customers a consistent Azure control plane experience for deployment and lifecycle operations instead of requiring a separate, manual Helm installation for each cluster.
Gain deeper visibility into Kubernetes workloads
The extension deploys the New Relic Kubernetes integration to the selected AKS cluster. The integration provides visibility across Kubernetes infrastructure and workloads, including cluster, node, namespace, deployment, pod, and container health and performance.
Depending on the enabled New Relic configuration, customers can also bring together Kubernetes events, logs, and Prometheus-formatted metrics with application and Azure platform telemetry in New Relic. This helps application, platform, and site reliability engineering teams investigate issues across the stack without stitching together disconnected views.
Teams can use New Relic to:
- Understand resource consumption and health across clusters, nodes, pods, and containers.
- Identify unhealthy workloads, container restarts, and capacity constraints.
- Correlate Kubernetes infrastructure signals with application performance data.
- Explore Kubernetes entities and relationships through New Relic’s cluster experience.
- Create dashboards, alerts, and operational workflows using telemetry from Azure and AKS.
The result is a more direct path from detecting an issue to understanding its impact on applications and users.
Reduce operational toil with unified telemetry
For organizations operating multiple AKS clusters, consistency is as important as visibility. Manual installation can lead to configuration drift, missed clusters, and additional work whenever monitoring components need to be changed.
The Azure Native New Relic Service experience helps address these challenges by providing:
- Simplified onboarding: Install the integration from the Azure portal without building a separate deployment workflow.
- Centralized visibility: Review AKS extension status alongside other Azure resources connected to New Relic.
- Azure governance alignment: Use Azure Resource Manager and Azure role-based access control as part of the management experience.
- Lifecycle management: Install or remove the extension through a consistent Azure workflow.
- Unified, full-stack observability: Connect AKS telemetry with application, infrastructure, log, and Azure platform data in New Relic.
This experience is particularly useful for platform teams that want to make observability available as a standardized service while allowing development teams to use New Relic for troubleshooting and performance optimization.
Get started
To begin monitoring AKS with Azure Native New Relic Service:
- Either browse to the Marketplace offer listing or in the Azure portal, create an Azure Native New Relic Service resource.
- Go to New Relic account config > Azure Kubernetes Services.
- Select the AKS cluster that you want to monitor.
- Select Install Extension and then confirm the installation.
- After the status changes to Installed, open New Relic to explore your Kubernetes data and configure the dashboards and alerts appropriate for your environment.
If you face any technical challenges do raise a support ticket and share your feedback.