Describe activity log events

Completed

The Azure Monitor activity log is a subscription log that provides insight into subscription-level events that occur in Azure. Events can include a range of data from Azure Resource Manager operational data to updates on Azure service health events.

How to use the Azure Activity Log

Things to know about activity logs

Let's examine some details about working with activity logs in Azure Monitor.

  • You can use the information in activity logs to understand the status of resource operations and other relevant properties.

  • Activity logs can help you determine the "what, who, and when" for any write operation (PUT, POST, DELETE) performed on resources in your subscription.

  • Activity logs are kept for 90 days.

  • You can query for any range of dates in an activity log, as long as the starting date isn't more than 90 days in the past.

  • You can retrieve events from your activity logs by using the Azure portal, the Azure CLI, PowerShell cmdlets, and the Azure Monitor REST API.

Diagram that shows how Azure Monitor activity logs gather information from compute and non-compute resources in Azure.

Business scenarios

Activity logs can help you monitor your configuration and get details for many scenarios, such as:

What operations happened on resources in my subscription?

Who initiated the operations?

When did the operations occur?

What's the current status of the operations?

What are the values of other properties that can help with my analysis of the resources and operations?