Retrieving Azure diagnostics

Question

I have an app running on Azure which logs (traces, really) to the Azure Diagnostics storage. I'm looking for a good tool which can be used to analyze these logs.

I know it's possible to retrieve these trace logs using the Server Explorer in Visual Studio, but this tool is a bit cumbersome. For instance, I can't specify a time interval for log records.

Also tried Azure Diagnostics Manager from Cerebrata, which is nice, but wonder if there any other good alternatives?

(The logging itself works just fine, it's the retrieval and analysis of the logs which I'm interested in)

Answer 1

Cerebrata certainly have the most complete solution for dealing with diagnostics and it's not especially expensive, but it does still cost money.

If you're just looking at the trace information then I've found that just querying the Azure Tables works well enough. If you're not able to convert a time into ticks in your head (which is what the PartitionKey of the table is), then you can use LINQPad. Jason Haley has provided full instructions and helper code.

Answer 2

Cerebrata's tool is probably the best to date to deal with diagnostics information.