Types of logs you can collect
Cloud environments produce several kinds of logs:
- Application logs: what your code writes out, such as errors, debug statements, and transaction records.
- Platform logs: what your managed services record, such as your Kubernetes cluster, App Service, or Cloud Run containers.
- Audit logs: who logged in, who changed which configuration, and which API calls were made. Often required for compliance.
- Network logs: traffic patterns, such as VPC flow logs that show what’s talking to what.
- Service logs: request details, latency, and error responses from load balancers and CDNs.
You probably don’t need all of these at once. Start with application and platform logs to debug production issues, add audit logs if you have compliance requirements, and layer in network and service logs as your practice matures.
Where each type lives
Questions you can answer
With cloud logs in Grafana, you can answer questions like:
- What errors are occurring across my services?
- Who accessed what resources and when?
- What happened in the 5 minutes before the outage?
- Which API calls are failing and why?