Storage Services Overview:Getting Started

Step 1: Activate Simple Log Service

1. Log on to the Simple Log Service console.

2. Follow the on-screen instructions to activate Simple Log Service.

   For more information about the billing of Simple Log Service, see Billing overview.

Step 2: Create a project and a Logstore

1. Create a project.

   1. In the Projects section, click Create Project.

   2. In the Create Project panel, configure the following parameters. For other parameters, retain the default settings. For more information, see Create a project.

      Parameter	Description
      Project Name	The name of the project. The name must be unique within your Alibaba Cloud account. After the project is created, you cannot change the name of the project.
      Region	The region where the data center of the project resides. We recommend that you select the region where the ECS instance resides. This way, you can accelerate log collection over an internal network of Alibaba Cloud. After the project is created, you cannot change the region or migrate the project to another region.

   3. Click Create.

2. Create a Logstore.

   After the project is created, you are prompted to create a Logstore.

   In the Create Logstore panel, configure the following parameters. For other parameters, retain the default settings. For more information, see Create a Logstore.

   Parameter	Description
   Billing Mode	The billing mode of the Logstore. Valid values: Pay-by-ingested-data and Pay-by-feature. For more information, see Billable items.
   Logstore Name	The name of the Logstore. The name must be unique in the project to which the Logstore belongs. After the Logstore is created, you cannot change the name of the Logstore.
   Shards	The number of shards. Simple Log Service provides shards to read and write data.
   Automatic Sharding	Specifies whether to enable the automatic sharding feature. If you turn on Automatic Sharding, Simple Log Service increases the number of shards when the existing shards cannot accommodate the data that is written. If the specified number of shards can meet your business requirements, you can turn off Automatic Sharding.

Step 3: Collect logs

After the Logstore is created, you are prompted to import data.

1. In the Created dialog box, click Data Collection Wizard.

2. On the Self-managed Open Source/Commercial Software tab of the Quick Data Import dialog box, find Single Line - Text Logs and click Integrate Now.

3. Create a machine group.

   1. Select Servers for Scenario.

   2. Select ECS for Installation Environment.

   3. Click Create Machine Group next to Select Machine Group.

   4. In the Create Machine Group panel, select the ECS instance and click Install and Create Machine Group.

      For more information, see Install Logtail on ECS instances.

   5. Check whether Logtail is installed on the ECS instance. If Success is displayed in the Logtail Installation Status column, Logtail is installed.

   6. In the Create Machine Group panel, enter a name for the machine group and retain the default settings of other parameters. Then, click OK.

      For more information, see Create an IP address-based machine group.

4. Confirm that the machine group is displayed in the Applied Server Groups section and click Next.

   Important

   If you apply a machine group immediately after you create the machine group, the heartbeat status of the machine group may be FAIL. This issue occurs because the machine group is not connected to Simple Log Service. To resolve this issue, you can click Automatic Retry. If the issue persists, see What do I do if no heartbeat connections are detected on Logtail?

5. Create a Logtail configuration and click Next.

   Configure the following parameters and retain the default settings of other parameters.

   Parameter	Description
   Configuration Name	The name of the Logtail configuration. The name must be unique in the project. After the Logtail configuration is created, you cannot change the name of the Logtail configuration.
   File Path	The directory and name of the log file. Specify the value based on the location of logs on your server. In this example, specify /var/log/nginx/access.log.
   Log Sample	A valid sample log that is collected from an actual scenario. In this example, enter the following sample log: 127.0.0.1 - - [10/Jun/2022:12:36:49 +0800] "GET /index.html HTTP/1.1" 200 612 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_13_6) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/68.0.3440.106 Safari/537.36"

   After you configure the parameters, click Next. Then, Simple Log Service starts to collect logs.

   Note

   • A Logtail configuration requires up to 3 minutes to take effect.

   • If an error occurs when you use Logtail to collect logs, see How do I view Logtail collection errors? and How do I troubleshoot the common errors that may occur when Simple Log Service collects logs?

6. Preview data, configure indexes, and then click Next.

   By default, full-text indexing is enabled for Simple Log Service. You can also configure field indexes based on collected logs in manual mode or automatic mode. To configure field indexes in automatic mode, click Automatic Index Generation. This way, Simple Log Service automatically creates field indexes. For more information, see Create indexes.

   Important

   If you want to query and analyze logs, you must enable full-text indexing or field indexing. If you enable both full-text indexing and field indexing, the system uses only field indexes.

Step 4: Query and analyze logs

After you create indexes, you can query and analyze logs.

1. In the End step of the wizard, click Query Log.

   You must wait approximately 1 minute for the indexes to take effect. Then, you can view the collected logs on the Raw Logs tab. For more information, see Query and analyze logs.

2. On the query and analysis page of the Logstore, enter a query statement and specify a time range.

   For example, you can execute the following query statement to count the number of requests by status code. The query and analysis results are displayed in a table.

   • Query statement

     * | SELECT status, COUNT(status) AS total GROUP BY status

     For more information about query statements, see Log search overview and Log analysis overview.

   • Query and analysis results

     Simple Log Service can display query and analysis results in different charts. For more information, see Overview of visualization.

     

FAQ

Am I charged if I only create projects and Logstores?

By default, shard resources are reserved when you create a Logstore. You are charged for active shards. For more information, see Why am I charged for active shards?

What do I do if logs fail to be collected?

When you use Logtail to collect logs, a failure may occur due to Logtail heartbeat failures, collection errors, or invalid Logtail configurations. For more information, see What do I do if errors occur when I use Logtail to collect logs?

What do I do if I can query logs but cannot analyze logs on the query and analysis page of a Logstore?

If you want to analyze logs, you must configure indexes for log fields and turn on Enable Analytics for the fields. For more information, see Create indexes.