Azure Data Explorer Public Preview

There is lots of great stuff flowing out of Microsoft Ignite this week, but my favorite so far is the announcement about the public preview of Azure Data Explorer. We've been using this tool internally for a while now and it has revolutionized how we do big data analysis. What used to take us hours on a map reduce cluster is reduced to small numbers of minutes. My team is using this technology as the fundamental data storage and query system to help us detect anomalies in the health of Azure virtual machines around the world. Thanks to the rapid data ingestion and query capabilities, we're making those detections ~5-7 minutes after the event happens. The query language might require a bit of a mindshift, but it's extremely powerful, and, in my opinion, preferable to languages like SQL. My team has transitioned almost 100% of our data storage to this tool, and we have been thrilled with the new business opportunities that it opens up for us.

Get started by reading that announcement link mentioned above. You can also check out the Tech Community page as questions and answers start popping up there. Welcome to the world of Azure Data Explorer!