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Read flow logs

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Important

On September 30, 2027, network security group (NSG) flow logs will be retired. As part of this retirement, you'll no longer be able to create new NSG flow logs starting June 30, 2025. We recommend migrating to virtual network flow logs, which overcome the limitations of NSG flow logs. After the retirement date, traffic analytics enabled with NSG flow logs will no longer be supported, and existing NSG flow logs resources in your subscriptions will be deleted. However, NSG flow logs records won't be deleted and will continue to follow their respective retention policies. For more information, see the official announcement.

In this article, you learn how to selectively read portions of Azure Network Watcher flow logs using PowerShell without having to parse the entire log. Flow logs are stored in a storage account in block blobs. Each log is a separate block blob that is generated every hour and updated with the latest data every few minutes. Using the script provided in this article, you can read the latest data from the flow logs without having to download the entire log.

The concepts discussed in this article aren't limited to the PowerShell and are applicable to all languages supported by the Azure Storage APIs.

Prerequisites

Retrieve the blocklist

The following PowerShell script sets up the variables needed to query the network security group flow log blob and list the blocks within the CloudBlockBlob block blob. Update the script to contain valid values for your environment, specifically "yourSubscriptionId", "FLOWLOGSVALIDATIONWESTCENTRALUS", "V2VALIDATIONVM-NSG", "yourStorageAccountName", "ml-rg", "000D3AF87856", "11/11/2018 03:00". For example, yourSubscriptionId should be replaced with your subscription ID.

function Get-NSGFlowLogCloudBlockBlob {
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param (
        [string] [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] $subscriptionId,
        [string] [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] $NSGResourceGroupName,
        [string] [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] $NSGName,
        [string] [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] $storageAccountName,
        [string] [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] $storageAccountResourceGroup,
        [string] [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] $macAddress,
        [datetime] [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] $logTime
    )

    process {
        # Retrieve the primary storage account key to access the network security group logs
        $StorageAccountKey = (Get-AzStorageAccountKey -ResourceGroupName $storageAccountResourceGroup -Name $storageAccountName).Value[0]

        # Setup a new storage context to be used to query the logs
        $ctx = New-AzStorageContext -StorageAccountName $StorageAccountName -StorageAccountKey $StorageAccountKey

        # Container name used by network security group flow logs
        $ContainerName = "insights-logs-networksecuritygroupflowevent"

        # Name of the blob that contains the network security group flow log
        $BlobName = "resourceId=/SUBSCRIPTIONS/${subscriptionId}/RESOURCEGROUPS/${NSGResourceGroupName}/PROVIDERS/MICROSOFT.NETWORK/NETWORKSECURITYGROUPS/${NSGName}/y=$($logTime.Year)/m=$(($logTime).ToString("MM"))/d=$(($logTime).ToString("dd"))/h=$(($logTime).ToString("HH"))/m=00/macAddress=$($macAddress)/PT1H.json"

        # Gets the storage blog
        $Blob = Get-AzStorageBlob -Context $ctx -Container $ContainerName -Blob $BlobName

        # Gets the block blog of type 'Microsoft.Azure.Storage.Blob.CloudBlob' from the storage blob
        $CloudBlockBlob = [Microsoft.Azure.Storage.Blob.CloudBlockBlob] $Blob.ICloudBlob

        #Return the Cloud Block Blob
        $CloudBlockBlob
    }
}

function Get-NSGFlowLogBlockList  {
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param (
        [Microsoft.Azure.Storage.Blob.CloudBlockBlob] [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] $CloudBlockBlob
    )
    process {
        # Stores the block list in a variable from the block blob.
        $blockList = $CloudBlockBlob.DownloadBlockListAsync()

        # Return the Block List
        $blockList
    }
}


$CloudBlockBlob = Get-NSGFlowLogCloudBlockBlob -subscriptionId "yourSubscriptionId" -NSGResourceGroupName "FLOWLOGSVALIDATIONWESTCENTRALUS" -NSGName "V2VALIDATIONVM-NSG" -storageAccountName "yourStorageAccountName" -storageAccountResourceGroup "ml-rg" -macAddress "000D3AF87856" -logTime "11/11/2018 03:00" 

$blockList = Get-NSGFlowLogBlockList -CloudBlockBlob $CloudBlockBlob

The $blockList variable returns a list of the blocks in the blob. Each block blob contains at least two blocks. The first block has a length of 12 bytes and contains the opening brackets of the JSON log. The other block is the closing brackets and has a length of 2 bytes. The following example log has seven individual entries in it. All new entries in the log are added to the end right before the final block.

Name                                         Length Committed
----                                         ------ ---------
ZDk5MTk5N2FkNGE0MmY5MTk5ZWViYjA0YmZhODRhYzY=     12      True
NzQxNDA5MTRhNDUzMGI2M2Y1MDMyOWZlN2QwNDZiYzQ=   2685      True
ODdjM2UyMWY3NzFhZTU3MmVlMmU5MDNlOWEwNWE3YWY=   2586      True
ZDU2MjA3OGQ2ZDU3MjczMWQ4MTRmYWNhYjAzOGJkMTg=   2688      True
ZmM3ZWJjMGQ0ZDA1ODJlOWMyODhlOWE3MDI1MGJhMTc=   2775      True
ZGVkYTc4MzQzNjEyMzlmZWE5MmRiNjc1OWE5OTc0OTQ=   2676      True
ZmY2MjUzYTIwYWIyOGU1OTA2ZDY1OWYzNmY2NmU4ZTY=   2777      True
Mzk1YzQwM2U0ZWY1ZDRhOWFlMTNhYjQ3OGVhYmUzNjk=   2675      True
ZjAyZTliYWE3OTI1YWZmYjFmMWI0MjJhNzMxZTI4MDM=      2      True

Read the block blob

In this section, you read the $blocklist variable to retrieve the data. In the following example, we iterate through the blocklist to read the bytes from each block and store them in an array. Use the DownloadRangeToByteArray method to retrieve the data.

function Get-NSGFlowLogReadBlock  {
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param (
        [System.Array] [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] $blockList,
        [Microsoft.Azure.Storage.Blob.CloudBlockBlob] [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] $CloudBlockBlob

    )
    # Set the size of the byte array to the largest block
    $maxvalue = ($blocklist | measure Length -Maximum).Maximum

    # Create an array to store values in
    $valuearray = @()

    # Define the starting index to track the current block being read
    $index = 0

    # Loop through each block in the block list
    for($i=0; $i -lt $blocklist.count; $i++)
    {
        # Create a byte array object to story the bytes from the block
        $downloadArray = New-Object -TypeName byte[] -ArgumentList $maxvalue

        # Download the data into the ByteArray, starting with the current index, for the number of bytes in the current block. Index is increased by 3 when reading to remove preceding comma.
        $CloudBlockBlob.DownloadRangeToByteArray($downloadArray,0,$index, $($blockList[$i].Length)) | Out-Null

        # Increment the index by adding the current block length to the previous index
        $index = $index + $blockList[$i].Length

        # Retrieve the string from the byte array

        $value = [System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetString($downloadArray)

        # Add the log entry to the value array
        $valuearray += $value
    }
    #Return the Array
    $valuearray
}
$valuearray = Get-NSGFlowLogReadBlock -blockList $blockList -CloudBlockBlob $CloudBlockBlob

The $valuearray array contains now the string value of each block. To verify the entry, get the second to the last value from the array by running $valuearray[$valuearray.Length-2]. You don't need the last value because it's the closing bracket.

The results of this value are shown in the following example:

{
	"records": [
		{
			"time": "2017-06-16T20:59:43.7340000Z",
			"systemId": "abcdef01-2345-6789-0abc-def012345678",
			"category": "NetworkSecurityGroupFlowEvent",
			"resourceId": "/SUBSCRIPTIONS/aaaa0a0a-bb1b-cc2c-dd3d-eeeeee4e4e4e/RESOURCEGROUPS/MYRESOURCEGROUP/PROVIDERS/MICROSOFT.NETWORK/NETWORKSECURITYGROUPS/MYNSG",
			"operationName": "NetworkSecurityGroupFlowEvents",
			"properties": {
				"Version": 1,
				"flows": [
					{
						"rule": "DefaultRule_AllowInternetOutBound",
						"flows": [
							{
								"mac": "000D3A18077E",
								"flowTuples": [
									"1497646722,10.0.0.4,168.62.32.14,44904,443,T,O,A",
									"1497646722,10.0.0.4,52.240.48.24,45218,443,T,O,A",
									"1497646725,10.0.0.4,168.62.32.14,44910,443,T,O,A",
									"1497646725,10.0.0.4,52.240.48.24,45224,443,T,O,A",
									"1497646728,10.0.0.4,168.62.32.14,44916,443,T,O,A",
									"1497646728,10.0.0.4,52.240.48.24,45230,443,T,O,A",
									"1497646732,10.0.0.4,168.62.32.14,44922,443,T,O,A",
									"1497646732,10.0.0.4,52.240.48.24,45236,443,T,O,A"
								]
							}
						]
					},
					{
						"rule": "DefaultRule_DenyAllInBound",
						"flows": []
					},
					{
						"rule": "UserRule_ssh-rule",
						"flows": []
					},
					{
						"rule": "UserRule_web-rule",
						"flows": [
							{
								"mac": "000D3A18077E",
								"flowTuples": [
									"1497646738,13.82.225.93,10.0.0.4,1180,80,T,I,A",
									"1497646750,13.82.225.93,10.0.0.4,1184,80,T,I,A",
									"1497646768,13.82.225.93,10.0.0.4,1181,80,T,I,A",
									"1497646780,13.82.225.93,10.0.0.4,1336,80,T,I,A"
								]
							}
						]
					}
				]
			}
		}
	]
}

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