At the end of November, we’ll be migrating the Sematext Logs backend from Elasticsearch to OpenSearch

New Windows logs integration

October 7, 2024

We’ve just added Windows Logs integration in Sematext Cloud alongside our other 100+ integrations.

This integration allows you to effortlessly collect, monitor, analyze, and alert on Windows Logs. It comes with 5 out-of-the-box dashboards and 5 default alert rules, so you can start getting value from it even without any of your own customizations.

Check out what we collect and visualize with out-of-the-box dashboards:

  • Application logs capture information generated by applications running on the system, detailing activities, errors, warnings, and informational messages. These logs can help diagnose issues, track performance, and monitor the overall behavior of applications.
  • Security logs record events related to system security, such as successful and failed login attempts, user account management (creation, deletion, or modification), permission changes, and access to resources. These logs help track user activities and security-related changes, providing information for auditing, compliance, and forensic analysis.
  • System logs contain events generated by the operating system and its components, focusing on the functioning and performance of the system itself. These logs capture information related to system hardware, drivers, and services, including errors, warnings, and status changes. For example, system logs can record events like driver failures, service startups or shutdowns, hardware issues, or updates to the operating system.
  • Together with all the above built-in reports, you’ll get out-of-the-box alerts.

Default Alert Rules:

  • Application Error Logs Anomaly Alert: Triggered when there is an unusual or excessive occurrence of application errors, such as a pattern of frequent application crashes or unusual error codes.
  • Unexpected System Shutdown: Triggered when the system experiences an unexpected shutdown. This could indicate power loss, hardware failure, or other critical issues.
  • System Shutdown by a Process or User: Monitors for system shutdown events initiated by a user or process. This alert helps track deliberate shutdowns and distinguishes them from unexpected shutdowns.

In conjunction with Windows Monitoring, you can now take full control of your Windows servers. Collecting both metrics and logs from Windows machines gives you a complete picture of your system’s health. Metrics show you the overall performance—like CPU, memory, and disk usage—helping you spot trends or sudden spikes. Logs, on the other hand, give you the detailed story behind those numbers, showing you what’s happening inside applications and the operating system. By combining metrics with logs, you can quickly find the root cause of issues, like why an application crashed or why the system slowed down, and fix them before they become bigger problems.

For more information, please refer to Windows Logs Integration.