Azure Monitor... or is it Log Analytics? Or Application Insights? Or Operational Insights? Or

Question

Here's my scenario.

Application:

1. Created an asp.net core app
2. Grab an ILogger<T> logger;
3. logger.LogInformation(new EventId(123456, "HelloEvent"), "Hello there");

Infrastructure:

1. Deploy service fabric (via ARM template)
2. Deploy app to service fabric

Me:

1. Click around hopelessly looking for "Hello there" in my HelloEvent

So...

The BIG question: What are all the pieces of log collection/processing offered by Microsoft Azure, and how do they fit together?

Application Insights... Looks cool. I added .UseApplicationInsights() in my builder and .AddApplicationInsightsTelemetry(..) into my Startup.

And I get beautiful logs... ...about service fabric events, dependencies like http calls, etc. But I can't find my "Hello there" HelloEvent.

Where do I get it?

...

Moving onwards, I looked into logs, monitoring, etc, with Azure.

I find "Log Analytics", which looks cool. Apparently Application Insights uses it. But I already have Application Insights. Does that mean I have Log Analytics? Or do I create my own Log Analytics workspace. If so, do my logs go to two places? Do I connect Application Insights to it somehow?

The ARM template for that actually is from 2015 for something called OperationalInsights. Although there's a 2017 version in examples, but not in the reference documentation.

So Operational Insights? Apparently that's from some Microsoft Operations Management Suite / OMS. Which was MMS before...?

And the more recent docs all talk about "Azure Monitor". But that's not even something I can deploy in Azure. Is it just a concept?

…

All I want to do is collect logs somewhere and then have cool stuff to search & visualize them :)

...and I still haven't found my "HelloEvent"

Can anyone shed light on either my simple "Where's my HelloEvent" or speak to the bigger picture question "What are the pieces and how do they all fit together"?

Answer 1

Regarding the "Where's my HelloEvent" with application insights:

Please make sure in Startup.cs -> Configure method, you specify the loglevel to information, like below:

public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env, ILoggerFactory loggerFactory)
{
 // other code

 //specify the LogLevel to Information, the default is warning
 loggerFactory.AddApplicationInsights(app.ApplicationServices,LogLevel.Information);
}

(Update)and if you want to include event id in the logs, Simply setup ApplicationInsightsLoggerOptions instance in Startup.ConfigureServices method.

services
    .AddOptions<ApplicationInsightsLoggerOptions>()
    .Configure(o => o.IncludeEventId = true);

My test code as below:

    public class HomeController : Controller
    {
     ILogger<HomeController> _logger;

        public HomeController(ILogger<HomeController> logger)
        {
            _logger = logger;
        }

        public IActionResult Index()
        {
            _logger.LogInformation(new EventId(123456, "HelloEvent"), "Hello there");

            return View();
        }

       // other code
    }

And in the azure portal, I can see "hello there":