Viewing and analyzing data in Azure Log Analytics - mersano/Article GitHub Wiki
Since it was released on February 1, 2010, Microsoft Azure now manages over 1.1 billion identities. This shows an increasing adoption of the service. Currently, Azure's share of the total cloud market is over 31%. The service now has about 300,000 developers that use Azure Bot Service. Data also showed that government agencies are among Microsoft Azure's biggest customers, with the number of Microsoft Azure government cloud users at over 6 million. Azure Log Analytics is a service that monitors your cloud and on-premises environments to maintain their availability, performance, and other aspects.
With Azure, an organization or business can quickly build, deploy, scale and manage servers, as well as services and applications across Microsoft's global cloud network. Azure is getting more powerful and useful every day. Recently, Microsoft announced Azure Stack which will allow the users to run Azure services on their own physical infrastructure. If you are running .NET applications, Azure is probably one of the easiest cloud providers you can integrate into your production deployment and set up staging environments for testing.
Perhaps, Microsoft Azure's strong approach to hybrid cloud is the reason why lots of people are switching from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to Azure. It is generally agreed that Azure has tons of powerful and useful features. Hence, the increasing adoption of the service. However, it can be very intimidating for IT teams to deploy Azure.
Unlike other Microsoft's services such as Office 365, Azure is not straight-cut. It is not easy to use. Thus, a lot of people struggle to understand how to really get started. Most users also find it difficult to troubleshoot application errors, diagnose operational issues, detect anomalies, or trace problems in Azure. In this case, using a third-party app can make it easier to make sense of Azure and run your services more efficiently. Services such Papertrail App allow you to visualize your Azure logs and identify trends and patterns. Moreover, with Papertrail, you can easily integrate your Azure logs with other third-party services such as PagerDuty, Slack, and Redshift for more efficient operation.
Viewing and analyzing data in Azure log analytics can be particularly challenging especially when you are just getting started. This is because each resource group creates its own set of logs. Besides, every application deployed also has its own individual logs.
You have two options for analyzing data stored in log analytics. These two options include using "Log Analytic Page" or "Log Search".
- Log Analytic Page
If you are working with log data or you want to create queries, opening the Log Analytics page from "Logs" in the Log Analytics menu can help you get things done faster. The advantage of using Log Analytic Page over Log Search is that you will be able to open multiple tabs, enjoy rich visualizations, syntax highlighting, smart analytics, improved intelligence and language auto-completion, column selection, and other features. You will also get access to "Smart Analytics" which allows you to identify spikes in your chart and do a quick analysis to identify the source of the problem.
- Log Search (Classic)
The second option you can use to view and analyze your data in Azure Log Analytics is what is known as "Log Search". You can open the "Log Search" page from "Logs (Classic)" in the log Analytics menu. Alternatively, you can also open it from Log Analytics in the Azure Monitor Menu. Ideally, Log Search is used when working with Long Analytics queries. However, it lacks some of the sophisticated features of "Log Analytic Page" mentioned above.
Like we already mentioned above, Azure puts every application you deployed on its own individual logs. This can make your monitoring to become somewhat fragmented across Azure services. Fortunately, there is a way you can make it better by using a third-party app to aggregate your logs into one location. This will make it easier and better for you to search, filter, review, and filter your works. This will also allow you to easily deal with complex deployments and keep up with your loggings. An application like Papertrail app makes it extremely easy to enjoy frustration-free logging for Azure and improve the quality and efficiency of your services.