Your Guide to Microsoft Copilot for Azure

Over 98% of businesses use the cloud in some capacity.

What’s more, millions of businesses build their cloud solutions with Azure services, including 95% of Fortune 500 companies.

All Microsoft Copilot versions are designed to make work functions easier. Copilot for Azure gives instant access to information about Azure environment, apps and services to users, as well as automating different routine tasks to help businesses estimate their costs or build workload infrastructures faster.

Copilot for Azure’s release date hasn’t yet been announced, but it wouldn’t be surprising if Copilot for Azure’s general availability would coincide with Microsoft’s first wave release plan scheduled for April through September 2024.

Our guide will give you an overview of Copilot for Azure’s capabilities to help you decide whether signing up for the preview is worth it.

What is Microsoft Copilot for Azure?

Copilot for Azure is an AI assistant designed for Microsoft’s cloud computing platform. It uses Large Language Models and Azure Resource Graph to help users understand, design, optimise and test services and apps in Azure environments.

The tool simplifies the navigation through hundreds of Azure’s analytics, machine learning, storage, web and other services. Like all Copilot variants, Copilot for Azure relies on prompts to perform tasks, so the quality of the input it receives often determines the quality of the output it generates.

A preview version of the AI assistant is available for Azure SQL Databases that automates the design, optimisation and operation of applications built with SQL databases in Azure environments.

Exploring Copilot’s Capabilities in Azure

Although it can perform a broad range of tasks in Azure, Copilot’s capabilities on this platform can be roughly divided into these categories:

• Design
• Optimise
• Operate
• Troubleshoot

Performing tasks from either of these categories with Copilot takes practice, so it may take you a while to discover the best way to implement the AI assistant into your company’s operations on the Azure platform.

Automating Tasks

Copilot in Azure gives you quick access to information about an environment, enables you to use Azure services more efficiently and lets you write and edit code automatically. Here’s a more detailed look at the automation tasks Copilot in Azure performs.

Learning More About an Azure Environment

Identifying non-compliant resources, checking if any of the virtual machines your business is using have enabled replication resources or finding all storage accounts you can access from the internet are a few examples of how Copilot can help you understand your Azure environment better.

Copilot provides insight into the health of Azure services so you can easily check if scheduled maintenance and service-impacting events are affecting your subscription. This feature reduces the chances of workflow disruptions caused by service outages.

Cost analysis is another Copilot feature that can prove valuable to Azure users. You can ask the AI companion to summarise your company’s Cloud spending and estimate its costs for the next quarter using the information from the Microsoft Cost Management app.

In addition, Copilot can identify cost-cutting areas of the company’s cloud operations and suggest the best way to implement cost optimisation actions.

Using Copilot to Make the Most Out of Azure Services

Creating virtual machines with Copilot helps you find the most cost-effective solutions as the tool generates suggestions on how to reduce costs on specific features.

It only needs a simple prompt like ‘How to build an inexpensive VM’ to generate contextual answers and suggest configuration settings that lower the virtual machine’s cost. Copilot can assist you while selecting a VM’s size or guide you through the process of setting up a scalable VM with high availability.

Reducing deployment time when developing a custom workload infrastructure is also among the benefits Copilot in Azure offers. The AI assistant asks a user a series of questions to understand the infrastructure’s purpose and suggests several deployment options.

Companies that use Azure Stack HCI clusters can use Copilot to detect issues and monitor the state of their hybrid infrastructure. The tool improves the security of storage accounts by strengthening their data resiliency and security posture.

Copilot generates suggestions on how to tighten the storage account’s security using the contextual information from the page the user is currently viewing and the instructions it receives through the prompt.

Users can ask Copilot to pull the metrics from the Azure Monitor platform to check the metrics for a particular resource. The AI assistant creates a summary and graph from the results it gathers and gives users quick access to Metrics Explorer where they can review the metrics in more detail.

Tapping into Copilot’s Code Generation Capabilities

Writing CLI scripts, authoring API policies and optimising code manually consumes a lot of resources and affects your company’s efficiency. Copilot for Azure performs these tasks automatically to simplify resource management and other operations.

The CLI scripts aren’t ready to use as soon as Copilot generates them, so you must find and replace the placeholder values with values from your Azure environment.

In addition to CLI scripts, the AI companion generates API Management policies tailored to the user’s needs. Once your policy definition is ready you can copy it to the code editor and make changes to it if necessary or ask the Copilot to interpret a section of the policy.

These options are also available to coders in Copilot for Azure:

• Code Optimisation features that improve an app’s performance.
• Automatic creation of Kubernetes YAML Files.
• Assistance with Azure App Services’ diagnostics and troubleshooting tools.

Using Copilot to Simplify Navigation and Configure Portal Settings in Azure Environments

Navigating Azure’s lengthy portfolio of services can be confusing if you’re new to its interface. Copilot automates this task by opening the app you want to access for you. By doing so, the AI assistant makes finding the apps you might want to add to your Azure environment easier.

It eliminates the need to open the Settings tab whenever you want to change the platform settings as you can simply ask Copilot to change or confirm the settings you selected.

The current version of Copilot for Azure has certain limitations that may prevent it from completing your request. Here’s a quick overview of Copilot’s limitations in Azure:

• Copilot displays just five items for some requests.
• Users cannot start more than ten chats with Copilot in a day.
• You cannot perform actions that require more than ten resources with Copilot.
• The maximum number of daily requests is 15.
• The language support is limited to English. 

How to Access Microsoft Copilot for Azure

As noted, Copilot for Azure is still in the preview stage, so you must apply for access if you want to test its capabilities. The Copilot icon will appear in your Azure environment once you’re granted access and you can click on it to ask the AI assistant a question.

At this point, users don’t have to go through the deployment process to start interacting with Copilot, but this might change after the tool becomes commercially available.

You can test Copilot for Azure for free during the preview stage. However, Microsoft hasn’t revealed how much the AI companion might cost after its official release or whether early adopters will be able to use it at a discounted price.

Streamlining Cloud Operations with Microsoft Copilot for Azure

Copilot’s features in Azure look amazing on paper, but it might be too early to evaluate the tool’s performance in real-time situations because only a limited number of Azure users have access to it.

All we know is that it promises to offer a range of powerful features to help businesses operate more effectively. Improving cloud operations by helping teams build powerful virtual machines, editing code or effortlessly deploying workload infrastructures – these are just some of the ways Copilot for Azure could help your business.