Azure storage analytics in readable format
Why should you use
storage analytics?
Windows
Azure Storage Analytics feature helps users to identify usage
patterns for all services available within an Azure storage account. This
feature provides a trace of the executed requests against your storage account
(Blobs, Tables and Queues).
Azure
storage analytics allows you to:
·
monitor requests to
your storage accounts
·
understand
performance of individual requests
·
analyze usage of
specific containers and blobs
·
debug storage APIs
at a request level.
Storage Analytics
Log Format
Each
version 1.0 log entry adheres to the following format:
<version-number>;<request-start-time>;<operation-type>;<request-status>;<http-status-code>;<end-to-end-latency-in-ms>;<server-latency-in-ms>;<authentication-type>;<requester-account-name>;<owner-account-name>;<service-type>;<request-url>;<requested-object-key>;<request-id-header>;<operation-count>;<requester-ip-address>;<request-version-header>;<request-header-size>;<request-packet-size>;<response-header-size>;<response-packet-size>;<response-content-length>;<request-md5>;<server-md5>;<etag-identifier>;<last-modified-time>;<conditions-used>;<user-agent-header>;<referrer-header>;<client-request-id>
Sample Log
1.0;2012-09-05T09:22:27.2477320Z;ListContainers;Success;200;4;4;authenticated;mediavideos;mediavideos;blob;"http://mediavideos.blob.core.windows.net/?comp=list&timeout=90";"/mediavideos";fac965bb-c481-49bf-ae80-7920d49449c6;0;121.244.158.2:15621;2011-08-18;306;0;152;1859;0;;;;;;"WA-Storage/1.7.0";;
As
you can see logs presented in this manner are not in a human readable format. To
find out which entry represents the request packet size, you have to count the
fields from the first entry and then get to the required field. This is no easy
task.
I
have now come across some tools that will simplify things and present the logs
in a readable format.
Tools
Let
us now look at some of these tools:
·
Azure Storage Explorer 5
Preview 1 - This tool helps to view the logs created after
enabling storage analytics against a storage account. The logs seen with help
of this tool are in same format as described above.
- CloudBerry Explorer for Azure blob storage - This tool provides support for viewing Windows Azure Storage Analytics log in readable format. I have added here sample log information retrieved with the help of this tool.
Figure 1 Sample
log information from CloudBerry Explorer
Is it not now easy
to read the log in the screen shot than in the sample log?
· Azure-Storage-Analytics Viewer – This is a visual tool that you can use to download Azure Storage Metrics and Log data, and display them the form of a chart. You can download this tool from the github website: https://github.com/mogliang/Azure-Storage-Analytics-Viewer.
· Azure-Storage-Analytics Viewer – This is a visual tool that you can use to download Azure Storage Metrics and Log data, and display them the form of a chart. You can download this tool from the github website: https://github.com/mogliang/Azure-Storage-Analytics-Viewer.
Figure 2
Azure-Storage-Analytics Viewer
To use this tool, enter the storage account
information in the Azure-Storage-Analytics
Viewer window and click the Load Metrics button.
You can see the various metrics
represented in the form of a chart. To add
metrics to the chart, right-click on a chart and select any option from the
pop-up menu.
Figure 3 Metrices Information Available in Chart Form
You can select the period for
which you wish to analyze the log information and save it to a csv file. Following is a sample snapshot of
the csv file which contains storage analytics information for the period
between 9 AM on 05th September 2012 and 9 AM on 6th
September 2012.
Figure 4 Sample CSV Log Snapshot from Azure-Storage-Analytics Viewer
This is the best way to analyse the
usage patterns for a storage account and make decisions for effective
utilization of storage account.
References
