Azure DIagnostics, WADLogs, Viewing in Azure Management Portal

Question

This may be an extremely stupid question I am new to Azure.

I am using Azure SDK 2.5

I have a worker role deployed to staging on Azure and I'm, using the diagnostics to trace the execution.

Trace.TraceInformation("Service WorkerRole has stopped");

Is there a way to view the WadLogs file that can be viewed in the server explorer from the Azure management portal? Or a way to have the data transferred to blob storage or somewhere else so it can be viewed online?

Basically all I want to easily be able to view when my worker role throws and exception from the Azure management portal.

Answer 1

You can use Application insights to monitor a worker role in the Azure portal. Technically Microsoft is still adding support for console and other non-web apps, but I was able to make what is already there work for my purposes.

I created an Application insight on the portal according to these instructions .

Then using the Nuget package manager in Visual Studio I added the Application insights API, Application insights for website (even though my worker role is not a web app) and the Application insights trace listener.

I then created an Application insight instance by adding the following to the worker role.

using Microsoft.ApplicationInsights;

namespace WorkerRole
{
public class WorkerRole : RoleEntryPoint
{
    private TelemetryClient tc = new TelemetryClient();

And then adding this to the onStart method in the worker role.

        tc.Context.InstrumentationKey = "XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXX";

You can find you instrumentation key in the Azure portal.

After running or deploying my worker role I could then view all of my Trace.TraceInformation and TraceError statements in the Azure portal as well as add tc.TrackError and tc.TrackEvent statements to track errors, exceptions and events.

Answer 2

You need to setup a storage account with your worker role to store the logs in a Table Storage. Add the following code in your config file <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="value="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=<your storage account name here>;AccountKey=<your storage account key here>" /> </ConfigurationSettings>

Your diagnostics related data will be stored in the azure tables and Trace logs are stored in the table name WadLogsTable . You need to use a storage explorer to view the logs from the table. I prefer to use Azure Storage Explorer as it is open source and supports Blobs,Tables and Queues.