Understanding diagnostics in Windows Azure

Understanding Diagnostics in Windows Azure

Windows Azure diagnostics provides facility to store diagnostics data. Azure diagnostics supports logging and monitoring of diagnostics data. It uses blob service or table service to save diagnostics data, depending on the diagnostics data. Before logs are saved in a container they are indexed in WADDirectoriesTable table in the storage account.

Following diagnostics data is stored in table storage:

Data Source

Table name in Azure Storage

Detail

Windows Azure Logs

WADLogsTable

These are the application logs dumped from the application.

Windows Azure Diagnostics Infrastructure Logs

WADDiagnosticInfrastructureLogsTable

These are the logs about running of diagnostics service.

Windows Event logs

WADWindowsEventLogsTable

These are the logs generated on the instance where logs are running.

Performance counters

WADPerformanceCountersTable

These are the performance matrices like memory utilization, processor utilization, response time etc.

Following diagnostics data is stored in blob storage:

Data Source

Container name in azure  storage

Detail

IIS Logs

wad-iis-logfiles

These are the IIS logs generated by role instances.

Failed Request Logs

wad-iis-failedreqlogfiles

These are the IIS failed requests logs generated by role instances.

Crash Dumps

wad-crash-dumps

These are the logs generated on the application crash.