Setting Configuration to Get Your Windows Azure Diagnostics

Windows Azure Diagnostics enables you to collect diagnostic data from an application running in Windows Azure. You can use diagnostic data for debugging and troubleshooting, measuring performance, monitoring resource usage, traffic analysis and capacity planning, and auditing. After the diagnostic data is collected it can be transferred to a Windows Azure storage account for persistence. Transfers can either be scheduled or on-demand.

My colleague, Greg Oliver, describes how to do your diagnostics in a blog post entitled,  Windows Azure Diagnostics–From the Ground Up. In it he says, “Azure diagnostics in two broad categories: the stuff that you get more-or-less for free and the stuff that you log with statements similar to Trace.WriteLine. There is more – quite a lot actually – but with these two forming the basis the rest should flow more easily by referencing the documentation in MSDN.”

Greg shows what diagnostics information you get for free (with zero code) with the worker role and web role templates and how to configure a set of data buffers for logging and diagnostic information. He shows how you can set the configuration in code and where to find the diagnostic information in Windows Azure Storage.

You can also send Trace.WriteLine statements to add your trace listings to the Windows Azure logs.

For more information

See Windows Azure Diagnostics–From the Ground Up and the MSDN Documentation Windows Azure Diagnostics.

Bruce D. KyleISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation