How to disable logging of verbose unuseful logs of IIS in Azure - iis

I have noticed that IIS of Azure Web-Roles is generating a lot of logs, most indicating access of web-spiders.
They are stored in the "wad-iis-logfiles" blob container.
What is the easiest way of disabling these kind verbose unuseful logs?

Windows Azure is simply transferring the IIS logs to blob storage, so whatever's in them is going to get transferred. If you don't want those logs at all, just change your Diagnostics config. If you do want IIS logs but somehow want to filter out these requests, I think you'll have to do that on the IIS side.
(I'm not clear on which of those things you want to do.)

not a direct answer to your question but 'The David Aiken' has a nice blog post and script how to handle these at a deployment level...
How To Clean up old Windows Azure diagnostics
http://www.davidaiken.com/2011/10/26/how-to-clean-up-old-windows-azure-diagnostics/
I'm interested to know how to do it in Azure/IIS (start-up task against IIS?)
Update you need to add WaIISHost.exe.config file like the diagnostics.wadcfg***

Related

Is it possible to get windows event logs into application insights?

We have application insights running in our application (on premise and hosted in azure) and we are sending telemetry without issues, different resources, regular data, pageViews, exceptions, traces etc, recently I was asked to increase the telemetry data by adding Windows Event logs (from event viewer), but, to be honest, I am quite new with azure or application insights and all the documentation I find it a bit confusing, since all I find talks about azure monitor, log analytics workspaces configuration, but nothing clear enough (at least to me) that points me to get this data logged into application insights resources specifically. Is this possible to achieve? Something like adding a nuget package and configure applicationInsights.config?
Update... I've followed your suggestions, and added the nuget package for EtwCollectorTelemetryModule, and modified the applicationInsights.config file.
This is how it looks now:
<Add Type="Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.EtwCollector.EtwCollectorTelemetryModule, Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.EtwCollector"> <Sources <Add ProviderName="Microsoft-Windows-Eventlog" Level="Warning" /> </Sources>
But, I'm still not able to see any kind of logs in the traces table (if i understand correctly, logs will be sent to that table.) Do I need to initialize this module in order to start tracing these logs?
Or am I doing something wrong?
I agree with #Peter Bons here. When you need to add Windows Event logs to azure application insights, you need to add ETW module in the config file.
And pls note here, the EtwCollectorTelemetryModule is an asp.net module so that it suitable for asp.net application.
You can refer to this tutorial to modify the configuration if your program written in asp.net. Pls note, Add Application Insights Telemetry mentioned in the doc is the operation 'right click the project and click Configure Application Insights'

IIS Shared config - applicationHost.config Error: Cannot write configuration file due to insufficient permissions

I've setup a UNC share for IIS shared config using a specific AD service account and set to FULL CONTROL. I've also exported the config from one IIS server and set-up an additional IIS server to point to the share. When I open the applicationhost.config for example on the UNC share and remove an application pool, I can see the entry also remove in both IIS servers.
So I know:
1) I can export to the share with the specific service account
2) Both IIS servers can read the config when I edit manually
3) However when I remove an app pool from one of the IIS servers through the manager I get the above error.
I've tried using the process monitor utility to see what account is being used to write to the config and it seems it is my own AD user account rather than the shared service account. I know IIS Manager has my username e.g. ROOT\MYNAME logged on, but I wouldn't have thought it would use this to write changes to the shared config. Surely it would use the service account?
Does anyone know how to prevent this error? Why does the shared config and tied service account not come into play when making changes on one of the servers?
So, IMHO, this error is a red herring. I was publishing to a server and got a message saying I was out of space. So, I logged in, realized there was a bit of cruft in extra apps published in IIS, we didn't need. I right clicked and tried to remove one. I got the same error as you.
Having done some manual changes to applicationHost, I thought it "might be me" but it seemed very odd that editing this file would cause such a thing. However, I had recently learned that windows does some funky 32 vs 64bit machinations with this file (google it).
Deciding I had better things to do, I asked our IT to add space to the VM and guess what? I am no able to remove these apps. My guess is that I was at the end of the line on space and the backend management of these special files was not completing and throwing this not-so-helpful exception.
I'm not a 100% about this. For full disclosure, I will add that updates had been applied recently, but I'm pretty confident that this is a possible solution.

Azure website node process lifecycle

I 've found out that Azure websites (trial version) doesn't autostart my node sever process (it starts only when I load the url in the web browser); and that when there are no requests in a while, the process is killed.
I mean, when I git push my server, I would like it to start running immediately and continuously.
I read (here, for example) that this might have to do with the way iisnode manages azure websites, and that I can't do anything to change it. Is this the actual way Azure websites work? Is there any way I can deal with this?
Thanks in advance,
Bruno.
You've find the answer. There is no other answer.
The process termination because of inactivity comes from IIS - there is Idle Timeout setting. Which to my knowledge is not configurable in Azure Web Sites (at least not Free tier). Check out also this SO question and its answer to get better understanding on why you can't change this timeout on the FREE and STANDARD tiers.
And here is an interesting workaround to avoid this idle timeout. Actually if you use technique, you will also have kind-of "auto start", in terms that when your scheduler hits your site after a new deployment, it will "boot up".
This can get a little complicated, but if you don't want to use their 5-min ping service, you can keep these always on by doing the following:
Create an app setting on your website configuration tab within the portal:
WEBSITE_PRIVATE_EXTENSIONS and give it a value of 1
Create a text file named applicationhost.xdt and populate it with:
<?xml version="1.0"?><configuration xmlns:xdt="http://schemas.microsoft.com/XML-Document-Transform"><system.applicationHost><applicationPools><add name="DefaultAppPool" managedRuntimeVersion="v4.5" startMode="AlwaysRunning"><processModel identityType="ApplicationPoolIdentity" /></add></applicationPools></system.applicationHost></configuration>
ftp into your website and create a folder on the root directory called Site Extensions. (there should now be 3 folders in your root: LogFiles, site, & SiteExtensions)
Create another folder within 'Site Extensions', named ASPLimits
Upload the applicationhost.xdt into the ASPLimits folder
Restart your website using the portal

Where is Umbraco.config stored in Azure cloud services?

I've got an existing Umbraco install on Azure cloud services (not Azure web sites), and although the web.config tells me that it should be found at ~/App_Data/umbraco.config, it isn't there.
Does anyone know where this would be stored? Is there a chance it is writing to a db table perhaps?
I need to edit some nodes as I suspect that at least one is owned by a user which no longer exists, hence no nodes at that level are visible in the admin system (JS error).
The site was set up with Umbraco Azure Accelerator, if that offers any clues.
Thanks!
It is worth noting that Umbraco hasn't needed the Umbraco Accelerator for Azure in the latest versions due to the use of Azure Web Sites. I am wondering which version of Umbraco you are running? The Accelerator projects are being deprecated and have ceased updates, as you can see here by the lack of recent updates. You can read more about the reasoning behind this, and about how the Accelerator's functionality is now a part of the Azure core itself, over here.
So - assuming that your site is an old one and you cannot just reinstall it as an Azure Web Site, can you firstly please confirm that you have the config enabled through the following setting in /config/umbracoSettings.config?
<XmlCacheEnabled>True</XmlCacheEnabled>
If this is false (as is best during all hosting environments except live) then we know that Umbraco will not use the cache. Can you please also check that the following section doesn't list any other machine IP addresses in umbracoSettings.config? Note that this is only relevant if the enabled attribute is true as in the example below.
<distributedCall enabled="true">
<user>0</user>
<servers>
...
</servers>
</distributedCall>
Next, we need to check that Umbraco is still set to use the location /App_Data/umbraco.config through the web.config file.
<appSettings>
<add key="umbracoContentXML" value="~/App_Data/umbraco.config" />
</appSettings>
We should consider the way that Umbraco works on Azure and whether it could have any effect on your site. The Umbraco Accelerator used to be necessary to synchronise the umbraco.config file between Azure instances. With each instance running a separate Umbraco website, there has to be a way that they can talk to each other. The accelerator mirrors that cache file between instances.
Assuming that your code is a default install, and not having been worked on by someone else before you, then it could be an idea to reduce your site to a single instance. Now see if it generates the cache after restarting the website. Finally, you can upgrade the site to see if it regenerates the cache.
These issues are usually always caused by some kind of configuration issue. I also remember that you can simulate Azure deployment using the Windows Azure SDK which you can use to examine for signs of the cache. Good luck.
I'm not sure about the Umbraco Accelerator or a non Web Site project, but we currently are running Umbraco on an Azure web site and App_Data\umbraco.config comes and goes when it pleases and the website unexplainably works. I would like to find the reason behind this if anyone has an answer??

Force update Diagnostic Configuration file under wad-control-container for Azure

I would like to update the Diagnostic configuration file for the azure roles whenever I upgrade my deployment. How can I do this automatically?
From time to time, we do change our diagnostic (using code) - and upgrade the service. But whenever we upgrade the service, it is still using the old diagnostic configuration and we do not see any new logs we have configured using new code.
How can I achieve this so that whenever I upgrade my deployment, it upgrades the diagnostic configuration as well.
I wonder if you have a bug in your diagnostics updating code. If each role ran code in OnStart or Run to configure diagnostics on startup, there would be no reason that your instances wouldn't be properly configured. I tend to think that imperative code that configures diagnostics is inherently a bad idea in the long run, but it should still work. If you share the code, maybe I can spot an issue.
The best** way I have found to update and enforce configuration is to use the diagnostics.wadcfg file and update it. When you upgrade your deployment, it will use those settings if you have not overridden it in code somewhere. Contrary to Microsoft's guidance at that link, it should be the preferred method as opposed to code which must be maintained and is orthogonal to your application's purpose. Said another way - a declarative configuration file that your ops team can maintain over writing code is usually a better idea. To use this, just include it in your deployment as content and delete any existing files in wad-control-container (and remove any code that configured diagnostics). It will just configure itself from that file then when you next upgrade.
** you can also using a 3rd party SaaS monitoring to set and maintain your diagnostics config. I work on one such one, but I am guessing you want to know how to do it yourself. :)

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