Azure Monitor Logs and Log Analytics

While metrics tell you what is happening (CPU is high, error rate spiked), logs tell you why (the specific error message, the user who triggered it, the request that failed). Azure Monitor Logs is the platform for collecting, storing, and querying log data, and Log Analytics is the query engine that makes it actionable.

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What Are Azure Monitor Logs?

Azure Monitor Logs stores structured and semi-structured event data in a Log Analytics workspace. This data comes from:

• Azure resources — diagnostic logs from VMs, App Services, databases, etc.
• Applications — telemetry from Application Insights
• Operating systems — Windows event logs, Linux syslog
• Custom sources — data sent via the Data Collection API or agents

Logs vs Metrics