What is a Web Server Log?
A web server log is a log file (or several files) automatically created and maintained by a web server consisting of a list of activities it performed and maintaining a history of page requests. The W3C keeps a standardized format (the Common Log Format) for web server log files, but other proprietary formats exist like Windows IIS. The ServicePilot Appservice W3C package provides automated web server log file analytics.
Web Server Logs monitoring
This package monitors users sessions on a website using a ServicePilot Agent.
This package uses the ServicePilot Agent to parse web logs and provide web server usage statistics over time. Statistics include:
- Requests per minute
- Sum of requests by HTTP return codes and methods
- Number of requests in each response time range
- Established vs. Timed-out requests
In order to provide deep web server insights, details collected per request include:
- Host and web page path
- Server and client IP
- Real User Response time
- HTTP Return code and method
- Client country and geolocation for public IPs
Note: The APM dashboards present the data collected by W3C logs however, for web applications that are hosted on web servers, it is preferable to instrument the application code as this allows for the passing for span and trace IDs to downstream applications.