About server logs
ArcGIS Server records events that occur, and any errors associated with those events, to logs. Logs are an important tool for monitoring and troubleshooting problems with your site. Information in the logs will help you identify errors and provide context on how to address problems. The logs also comprise a history of the events that occur over time.
For example, the following events are recorded in the logs:
- Installation and upgrade events, such as authorizing the software and creating the site
- Publishing of services, such as map services, geocode services, feature services, and so on
- Registering and unregistering data stores, including folders, file geodatabases, databases, enterprise geodatabases, and ArcGIS Data Store
- Site management events, such as adding and removing GIS servers, configuring clusters, specifying log settings, creating and removing server directories, updating the configuration store, and deleting the site
- Security events, such as users logging in or logging out of the site, creating, deleting, and disabling users, creating and changing user roles, creating and removing groups, updating HTTP and HTTPS settings, import and export of security certificates, and updating the site's identity store
- General events, such as restarting a GIS server machine, stopping or starting services, when services go into use, and noting layer drawing times in a service
The following events are not recorded in the logs:
- Federating and unfederating your site with Portal for ArcGIS
Access server logs
Use ArcGIS Server Manager to query, view, configure, and delete server logs. Manager aggregates the messages into a table that you can read and manipulate.
To access the logs, follow these steps:
- Open Manager and log in. If you need help with this step, see Logging in to Manager.
- Click Logs > View Logs to review the current logs. You can also use the filters controls on the page to help you narrow down events and display more relevant messages. Work with server logs contains details on how to capture events, query the logs, review messages, and filter events based on certain criteria.
- To manage log settings, such as the default level of logging, how long logs are kept on disk, and where the server writes its logs, click Settings. See About specifying server log settings for details.
- If you want to delete the logs, click Delete Logs. This deletes all of the log files from each GIS server in the site.
Performing advanced logging
If you're an advanced user of ArcGIS Server, you can view, query, and configure logs through the ArcGIS REST API. This API allows you to programmatically construct advanced queries, modify log settings, and derive statistics over time. You can use the ArcGIS Server Administrator Directory to help you learn how to construct these queries.
There are also several sample scripts available that use the ArcGIS REST API to work with logs, including the following: