How do I access the Windows Event Logs on a server instance in Azure Cloud Services?

Question

Can the Event Logs be accessed in Windows Azure for a deployment with multiple instances using Azure Cloud Services? It would be able to view the event logs of each server instance if necessary. The "black box" things just doesn't cut it.

Answer 1

If you enable Remote Desktop you can connect to each instance and check Event Log remotely.

On the other hand you can configure Azure Diagnostics to copy Event Log to Azure Blob Storage Account periodically.

1. Enable Azure Diagnostics in .csdef

   <WebRole name="roleName">
    <Imports>
     <Import moduleName="Diagnostics" />
    </Imports>
   </WebRole>
   

2. Configure Diagnostics Account in .cscfg (be sure to use https for DefaultEndpointsProtocol).

   <Role name="roleName">
    <Instances count="1" />
     <ConfigurationSettings>
      <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=accountName;AccountKey=accountKey" />
     </ConfigurationSettings>
   </Role>
   

3. Add Diagnostic Initalization to OnStart method.

   var config = DiagnosticMonitor.GetDefaultInitialConfiguration();
   config.WindowsEventLog.DataSources.Add("System!*");
   DiagnosticMonitor.Start("Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString", config);
   

See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/microsoft.windowsazure.diagnostics.diagnosticmonitorconfiguration.aspx for details.