Set up Azure log forwarding

Azure log forwarding allows you to stream Azure logs from Azure Event Hubs into Dynatrace logs via an Azure Function App instance. It supports both Azure resource logs and activity logs.

Resources to be deployed

Azure log forwarding is performed directly through Cluster API. If you don't want to use direct ingest through the Cluster API, you have two options:

• Use Azure log forwarding setup to automatically deploy and configure a dedicated containerized ActiveGate.
• Use an existing ActiveGate for log ingestion.

The following resources will be created by the Azure logs forwarder deployment script:

• Storage account (Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts)
• Storage Account Blob Service (Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/blobServices)
• Azure App Service plan (Microsoft.Web/serverfarms)
• Azure Function App (Microsoft.Web/sites)

If you choose to use a new ActiveGate, the following resources will also be created, besides the ones already mentioned:

• Virtual Network (Microsoft.Network/VirtualNetworks)
• Subnet (Microsoft.Network/virtualNetworks/subnets)
• Network Profile (Microsoft.Network/networkProfiles)
• Container Instance (Microsoft.ContainerInstance/containerGroups)

For details about the resources created, see the Azure Resource Manager file on GitHub

Prerequisites

Note: If you're using an earlier version of Dynatrace, see Alternative deployments for instructions.

See below the list of requirements for setting up Azure log forwarding. Some are needed before you start deployment, others during the deployment process.

Dynatrace

• Enable generic log ingestion
• The latest version of Dynatrace log monitoring
• Create an API token and enable the Ingest logs permission

Azure

1. Set up an Azure Event Hubs instance in each Azure location from where you want to pull logs.
2. Select the resource group where you want the deployment to run, or create a new one for the deployment. To create a new Azure resource group, run the command below, making sure to replace the placeholders with your actual values.

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az group create --name <your_resource_group> --location <your_resource_group_region>

3. Create an authorization rule with the listen permission for the Event Hubs instance that is configured for receiving logs:

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az eventhubs eventhub authorization-rule create --resource-group <your_resource_group> --namespace-name <your_event_hub_namespace> --eventhub-name <your_event_hub_instance> --name <authorization_rule_name> --rights Listen

4. Get an Event Hubs connection string for the authorization rule created above:

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az eventhubs eventhub authorization-rule keys list --resource-group <your_resource_group> --namespace-name <your_event_hub_namespace> --eventhub-name <your_event_hub_instance> --name <your_authorization_rule_name>

5. Configure diagnostic settings for resources from which you want to stream logs so that the diagnostic settings point to Azure Event Hubs instances.

CLI

• You can run Azure log forwarding deployment using Azure Portal Cloud Shell (Bash) or from any machine with Azure CLI and Bash shell (Linux or Windows WSL).

Deploy

1. Set the following environment variables, making sure to replace the placeholders (<...>) with your own values.

• For DEPLOYMENT_NAME, enter your deployment name (lowercase only).
• For TARGET_URL, enter your environment URL: https://<your_environment_ID>.live.dynatrace.com. To learn how to determine your environment ID, see environment ID.
• For TARGET_API_TOKEN, enter your API token. See Dynatrace requirements for details.
• For RESOURCE_GROUP, enter the name of the Azure resource group in which deployment will run. See Azure requirements for details.
• For EVENT_HUB_CONNECTION_STRING, enter the connection string for the Azure Event Hubs instances configured for receiving logs. See Azure requirements for details.

Note: optional You can enable self-monitoring and/or log filtering during or after deployment.

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DEPLOYMENT_NAME=<your_deployment_name>
TARGET_URL=<your_environment_URL>
TARGET_API_TOKEN=<your_API_token>
RESOURCE_GROUP=<your_resource_group>
EVENT_HUB_CONNECTION_STRING=<your_Event_Hub_connection_string>

2. Download the azure-log-forwarder-function script and deploy the infrastructure.

plaintextcopydownload
wget -q https://github.com/dynatrace-oss/dynatrace-azure-log-forwarder/releases/latest/download/dynatrace-azure-logs.sh -O dynatrace-azure-logs.sh && chmod +x ./dynatrace-azure-logs.sh \
&& ./dynatrace-azure-logs.sh --deployment-name $DEPLOYMENT_NAME --target-url $TARGET_URL --target-api-token $TARGET_API_TOKEN --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --event-hub-connection-string $EVENT_HUB_CONNECTION_STRING --use-existing-active-gate true --require-valid-certificate true

View Azure logs

After deploying the script, you can view and analyze Azure logs in Dynatrace: go to Analyze > Logs and filter for cloud.provider: azure.

Self-monitoring optional

Self-monitoring allows quick diagnosis to see if your function processes and sends logs to Dynatrace properly.

Enable self-monitoring

To enable self-monitoring, you have two options:

• During deployment: Set the --enable-self-monitoring parameter (or the SFM_ENABLED environment variable) to true.

• After deployment: In Azure Portal, go to the configuration of your deployed Function App instance and set SELF_MONITORING_ENABLED to true.

Self-monitoring metrics

Once you enable self-monitoring, you can view the following metrics in your dynatrace_logs_self_monitoring namespace of the newly deployed Function App instance.

Log filtering optional

To reduce the number of logs that are sent to Dynatrace, you can apply filters.
To apply filters you have two options:

• During deployment: Set the FILTER_CONFIG environment variable in Azure Portal Cloud Shell (Bash) before running the deployment script.

  1. Add the FILTER_CONFIG environment variable to the list of environment variables needed for the deployment script.

     Note: Be sure to replace placeholders with your values. See Filter options for details.

     shellcopydownload
     FILTER_CONFIG="FILTER.GLOBAL.MIN_LOG_LEVEL=<log_level>;FILTER.GLOBAL.CONTAINS_PATTERN=<pattern>;FILTER.RESOURCE_TYPE.MIN_LOG_LEVEL.<resource_type>=<log_level>;FILTER.RESOURCE_TYPE.CONTAINS_PATTERN.<resource_type>=<pattern>;FILTER.RESOURCE_ID.MIN_LOG_LEVEL.<resource_id>=<log_level>;FILTER.RESOURCE_ID.CONTAINS_PATTERN.<resource_id>=<pattern>"

  2. Set the environment variables.

  3. Download the azure-log-forwarder-function script and deploy the infrastructure.

• After deployment: Add FILTER_CONFIG in Azure Portal.

  1. In Azure Portal, go to the Configuration of your deployed Function App instance.

  2. In Application settings, search and select FILTER_CONFIG.

     Note: FILTER_CONFIG will appear in Azure after running the deployment script.

  3. Select Edit to add a Value for your filter.

     Example edit

     

     Note: Alternatively, you can select Advanced edit to enter your value in the JSON.

     Example advanced edit

     

  4. Select OK.

  5. Restart your Function App instance.

Filter options

FILTER_CONFIG is a key-value pair variable. You can set two types of filters (MIN_LOG_LEVEL and/or CONTAINS_PATTERN) for three filter groups (GLOBAL, RESOURCE_TYPE, and/or RESOURCE_ID).

Filter type: MIN_LOG_LEVEL

This filter type allows you to filter out logs with unwanted levels. Possible log levels are:

• Critical (or 1)
• Error (or 2)
• Warning (or 3)
• Informational (or 4)

Example:
FILTER_CONFIG="FILTER.GLOBAL.MIN_LOG_LEVEL=Warning"
In the example above, Informational logs will be skipped, and only Warning, Error, and Critical logs will be sent to Dynatrace.

Syntax options are:

• FILTER.GLOBAL.MIN_LOG_LEVEL=<log_level>
• FILTER.RESOURCE_TYPE.MIN_LOG_LEVEL.<resource_type>=<log_level>
• FILTER.RESOURCE_ID.MIN_LOG_LEVEL.<resource_id>=<log_level>

You can have one global-level filter and additional filters for a particular resource type/ID.

Example:
FILTER_CONFIG="FILTER.GLOBAL.MIN_LOG_LEVEL=Error;FILTER.RESOURCE_TYPE.MIN_LOG_LEVEL.MICROSOFT.WEB/SITES=Informational"
In the example above, all logs from instances with resource type MICROSOFT.WEB/SITES will be sent to Dynatrace, while for all other resources, Informational and Warning logs will be filtered out.

Filter type: CONTAINS_PATTERN

This filter type allows you to collect logs containing a particular text. We use fnmatch, which provides support for Unix shell–style wildcards. See Unix filename pattern matching for details.

Syntax options are:

• FILTER.GLOBAL.CONTAINS_PATTERN=<log_pattern>
• FILTER.RESOURCE_TYPE.CONTAINS_PATTERN.<resource_type>=<log_pattern>
• FILTER.RESOURCE_ID.CONTAINS_PATTERN.<resource_id>=<log_pattern>

Filter group: GLOBAL

This filter is set for all logs.

Filter group: RESOURCE_TYPE

This filter is used only for logs coming from resources of the given Azure resource type, such as Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines.

You can find the resource type in Azure Portal, in your resource's Properties.
Note: If the Type field doesn't appear in Properties, you can extract it from the resource ID string. Resource ID string syntax:
/subscriptions/<subscriptionId>/resourceGroups/<resourceGroupName>/providers/<resourceType>/<resourceName>
The resource type will be the part between /providers/ and /resourceName/.

Filter group: RESOURCE_ID

This filter is used only for logs coming from the given resource that is identified by the Azure resource ID.

You can look for the resource type in Azure Portal, in your resource's Properties.

Filter rules

• If you set two filter types for the same group, both conditions need to be met, so the second filter will have to match the first filter.

  For example, if you set MIN_LOG_LEVEL to Warning and CONTAINS_PATTERN to <some_important_message>, you will get only Warning logs containing <some_important_message>, and all other warning logs that don't contain that specific message will be filtered out.

• If you set one filter type for one group, and another filter type for another group, the two conditions do not overlap.

  For example, if you set MIN_LOG_LEVEL to Warning for GLOBAL, and CONTAINS_PATTERN to <some_important_message> for RESOURCE_TYPE, you will get all Warning, Error, and Critical logs from GLOBAL, and all logs containing <some_important_message> from RESOURCE_TYPE.

• If you set more than one pair of filter types (MIN_LOG_LEVEL and CONTAINS_PATTERN) for the same group (global or resource type/ID), only the last pair of filter types will apply; all the others will be ignored.

Update Azure log forwarding

To update Azure log forwarding

1. Download the latest Dynatrace Azure log forwarder.

   plaintextcopydownload
   wget https://github.com/dynatrace-oss/dynatrace-azure-log-forwarder/releases/latest/download/dynatrace-azure-log-forwarder.zip

2. Deploy the new version, making sure to replace the placeholders with the required values.

   plaintextcopydownload
   az webapp deployment source config-zip -g <your_resource_group_name> -n <application_name> --src <zip_file_path>

Alternative deployments

If you don't want to use direct ingest through the Cluster API, you have two options.

• Use Azure log forwarding setup to automatically deploy and configure a dedicated containerized ActiveGate.
• Use an existing ActiveGate for log ingestion.

See below for instructions for each of these options.

plaintextcopydownload
DEPLOYMENT_NAME=<your_deployment_name>
TARGET_URL=<your_environment_URL>
TARGET_API_TOKEN=<your_API_token>
TARGET_PAAS_TOKEN=<your_PaaS_token>
RESOURCE_GROUP=<your_resource_group>
EVENT_HUB_CONNECTION_STRING=<your_Event_Hub_connection_string>

plaintextcopydownload
wget -q https://github.com/dynatrace-oss/dynatrace-azure-log-forwarder/releases/latest/download/dynatrace-azure-logs.sh -O dynatrace-azure-logs.sh && chmod +x ./dynatrace-azure-logs.sh \
&& ./dynatrace-azure-logs.sh --deployment-name $DEPLOYMENT_NAME --target-url $TARGET_URL --target-api-token $TARGET_API_TOKEN --target-paas-token $TARGET_PAAS_TOKEN --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --event-hub-connection-string $EVENT_HUB_CONNECTION_STRING --use-existing-active-gate false

plaintextcopydownload
DEPLOYMENT_NAME=<your_deployment_name>
TARGET_URL=<your_environment_URL>
TARGET_API_TOKEN=<your_API_token>
RESOURCE_GROUP=<your_resource_group>
EVENT_HUB_CONNECTION_STRING=<your_Event_Hub_connection_string>
REQUIRE_VALID_CERTIFICATE=false

plaintextcopydownload
wget -q https://github.com/dynatrace-oss/dynatrace-azure-log-forwarder/releases/latest/download/dynatrace-azure-logs.sh -O dynatrace-azure-logs.sh && chmod +x ./dynatrace-azure-logs.sh \
&& ./dynatrace-azure-logs.sh --deployment-name $DEPLOYMENT_NAME --target-url $TARGET_URL --target-api-token $TARGET_API_TOKEN --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --event-hub-connection-string $EVENT_HUB_CONNECTION_STRING --use-existing-active-gate true --require-valid-certificate $REQUIRE_VALID_CERTIFICATE

Deploy table

For a complete list of parameters, see the deploy table below.

Uninstall Azure log forwarding

To uninstall the Dynatrace Azure log forwarder

1. In Azure Portal go to the resource group used for installation

2. Filter resources by tag.

   Note: The deployment script tags all created resources with LogsForwarderDeployment = <your_deployment_name>.

3. Delete the resources.

Troubleshoot

If you encounter issues removing the virtual network created for the containerized ActiveGate

1. Run the command below, making sure to replace the placeholders with your values.

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   az network profile delete --name <your_deployment_name>networkProfile --resource-group <your_resource_group_name>

2. Retry removing the virtual network in Azure Portal.