Available logs

This page provides basic information about the categories of logs that are available in Cloud Logging, as well as next steps for viewing and managing logs.

For a conceptual discussion of logs, see Basic concepts.

Categories of logs

Logging receives, indexes, and stores log entries from many sources, including Google Cloud, VM instances running the Logging agent, and other cloud services providers.

The following sections categorize the kinds of logs supported by Cloud Logging.

Google Cloud platform logs

Google Cloud platform logs are service-specific logs that can help you debug and troubleshoot issues, as well as better understand the Google Cloud services you're using.

The Google Cloud platform logs visible to you in Cloud Logging vary, depending on which Google Cloud resources you're using in your Google Cloud project or organization.

To learn more about the available Google Cloud platform logs, go to Using platform logs.

Note that some Google Cloud platform logs are sent by an agent.

VPC Flow Logs record a sample of network flows sent from and received by VM instances. For details, see Using VPC Flow Logs.

User logs

User logs are generated by user software, services, or applications and written to Cloud Logging using a logging agent, the Cloud Logging API, or the Cloud Logging client libraries.

Agent logs

The Logging agent is a process that collects logs from user applications and sends them to the Cloud Logging API. For more information, see Default logging agent logs.

Security logs

Cloud Logging provides two kinds of security-related logs, Cloud Audit Logs and Access Transparency logs; details are as follows.

Audit logs

Cloud Audit Logs includes three types of audit logs: Admin Activity, Data Access, and System Event. Cloud Audit Logs provide audit trails of administrative changes and data accesses of your Google Cloud resources.

For a list of Google Cloud services that write audit logs, see Google services with audit logs.

For more information about audit logging, see Cloud Audit Logs.

Access Transparency logs

Access Transparency provides you with logs of actions taken by Google staff when accessing your Google Cloud content. Access Transparency logs can help you track compliance with your organization's legal and regulatory requirements.

For a list of Google Cloud services that write Access Transparency logs, see Google services with Access Transparency logs.

For more information, including how to enable Access Transparency logs, see Access Transparency.

Multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud logs

Cloud Logging can ingest logs arriving from other cloud services providers, including Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS). These logs are called "multi-cloud" logs.

Cloud Logging also supports logs from your on-premises infrastructure and apps. If extending Cloud Logging to include your on-premises resources, the logs that are received by Cloud Logging are known as "hybrid-cloud" logs.

For details on how to ingest logs from your on-premises or other cloud sources, see Logging on-premises resources.

Using and managing logs

The following sections provide basic information about using and managing logs in Cloud Logging.

Log entry structure

Cloud Logging represents logs using a single data type, LogEntry, which defines certain common data for all log entries as well as the payloads that Google Cloud services can include.

Every log entry is characterized by the following information:

  • A log name. This includes the identifier of the Google Cloud project, folder, or organization that contains the log entry and the identifier of the log type, [LOG_ID].
  • The resource from which the log entry originated. This consists of a resource type from the Monitored resource list and corresponding label values that identify a specific instance.
  • A timestamp.
  • A payload, which can be represented as one of textPayload, jsonPayload, or (for some Google Cloud services) protoPayload.

By examining the [LOG_ID] string in each log entry's logName field, you can generally tell which aforementioned log category that the log entry falls into:

  • If [LOG_ID] contains cloudaudit.googleapis.com, it is a Cloud Audit Logs or Access Transparency log entry.
  • If [LOG_ID] is prefixed by serviceName.googleapis.com, it is a platform log entry.
  • If [LOG_ID] has no service prefix, it is most likely a user log entry.

For more information about log entry contents, see the Logging API reference for the LogEntry type.

Viewing logs

There are several ways to view your log entries:

Routing logs

You can control how your log entries are routed and stored. The Logs Router checks each log entry against existing rules to determine which log entries to discard, which log entries to store in Cloud Logging, and which log entries to include in exports to other destinations.

For details, see Logs Router overview.

Logs retention

Log entries are stored in logs buckets for a specified length of time and are then deleted. For more information, see Storing logs.

Pricing

For information on logs pricing, see Logging pricing.