Cloud Logging

Cloud Logging is Google Cloud's fully managed, real-time log management service. It ingests log data from Google Cloud services, on-premises environments, and other clouds, providing a centralised platform for storing, searching, analysing, and exporting logs. While metrics tell you what is happening, logs tell you why — providing the detail needed for debugging, auditing, and compliance.

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Log Types

Cloud Logging handles several types of logs:

Log Type	Description	Examples
Platform logs	Generated automatically by Google Cloud services	Cloud SQL slow query logs, GKE node logs, Cloud Run request logs
Audit logs	Record administrative activity and data access	Who created a VM, who accessed a BigQuery table
User-written logs	Generated by your application code	Application errors, business events, debug output
Agent logs	Collected by the Ops Agent from VMs	System logs, application logs from files, custom log files

Audit Log Categories