Viewing activity logs

Compute Engine activity logs are deprecated. Instead, use audit logs . For more information, see Migrating from activity logs to audit logs .

Compute Engine activity logs aren't the same thing as audit logs . Audit logs contain the same information as legacy activity logs and more. We recommend you use audit logs instead of activity logs. If you are already using activity logs, read Migrating from activity logs to audit logs .

Compute Engine provides activity logs that let you track certain events that affect your project, such as API calls and system events. Specifically, activity logs provide information about:

• Compute Engine API calls: GCE_API_CALL events are API calls that change the state of a resource. For example, API calls to create a disk, update instance metadata, create an instance group, change a machine type, are recorded in activity logs. API calls that do not update a resource, such as get and list requests aren't recorded.
• Operation logs: GCE_OPERATION_DONE events are logged when an API call changes the state of a resource finishes, Compute Engine returns a completed operation event that is recorded in your activity logs.
• System logs: GCE_SYSTEM_EVENT events are logged when Compute Engine performs a system event, it is recorded in activity logs. For example, a transparent maintenance event would be logged as a system event.

For example, with an API event, an activity log provides details such as the start and end time of an API request, the specifics of the request body, the authorized user who made the API request, and the request endpoint. You can download activity logs to search for specific API requests, or to review system events initiated by Compute Engine.

Activity logs do not provide billing or usage information about a project, such as how long a virtual machine instance has been running or how much it costs. For billing logs, see the billing export feature. For usage logs, see Viewing usage reports .

Activity logs are provided as part of the Cloud Logging service. For more information about Logging in general, read the Cloud Logging documentation.

Before you begin

• Familiar with Cloud Logging .
• If you haven't already, set up authentication . Authentication verifies your identity for access to Google Cloud services and APIs. To run code or samples from a local development environment, you can authenticate to Compute Engine by selecting one of the following options:

  Select the tab for how you plan to use the samples on this page:

  Console

  When you use the Google Cloud console to access Google Cloud services and APIs, you don't need to set up authentication.

  gcloud

  1. Install the Google Cloud CLI. After installation, initialize the Google Cloud CLI by running the following command:

     gcloud  
     init

     If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity .

  2. Set a default region and zone .

  REST

  To use the REST API samples on this page in a local development environment, you use the credentials you provide to the gcloud CLI.

  Install the Google Cloud CLI. After installation, initialize the Google Cloud CLI by running the following command:

  gcloud  
  init

  If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity .

  For more information, see Authenticate for using REST in the Google Cloud authentication documentation.

Permissions required for this task

To perform this task, you must have the following permissions :

• logging.logServiceIndexes.list on the project
• logging.logServices.list on the project

Viewing logs

Activity logging is enabled by default for all Compute Engine projects.

You can see your project's activity logs through the Logs Explorer in the Google Cloud console :

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Loggingpage.

   Go to the Logging page

2. When in the Logs Explorer, select and filter your resource type from the first drop-down list.
3. From the All logsdrop-down list, select compute.googleapis.com/activity_logto see Compute Engine activity logs.

Routing logs

To learn how to export activity logs, read Configure and manage sinks in the Cloud Logging documentation.

Identifying log files

When you export logs into Cloud Storage, the log files are stored in the structure described by the Log entry objects documentation.

Compute Engine log files are stored with the following directory structure:

 <bucket>/compute.googleapis.com/activity_log/<year>/<month>/<day> 

The following is an example log filename stored in a Cloud Storage bucket named my-bucket :

my-bucket/compute.googleapis.com/activity_log/2014/10/31/20:00:00_20:59:59_S0.json

In BigQuery, activity logs are stored in a set of tables, one table for each log type and day, and the tables are named using the following format:

<dataset>.compute_googleapis_com_activity_log_YYYYMMDD

For information about how to query activity logs in BigQuery, see Log entries in BigQuery .

Reading activity logs

Activity logs are structured as described in the LogEntry type documentation.

Compute Engine activity logs have:

• compute.googleapis.com/activity_log as value of the log field
• metadata , which describes common information such as timestamp
• structPayload , which contains the specific contents of the log entry

You can get more details about the common fields provided with every log entry from the LogEntry description, but the payload contents of activity log entries are specific to Compute Engine and are described below.

Payload contents

The contents of a log entry are provided in JSON object format, and are stored in the structPayload field. The structPayload field contains the following information:

"request": {
  "url": "https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/myproject/zones/us-central1-f/instances\",
  "body": "{
    \"canIpForward\":"false",
    \"description\":\"\",
    \"disks\":[{
      \"autoDelete\":true,
      \"boot\":true,
      \"deviceName\":\"example-instance\",
      \"initializeParams\":{
        \"diskSizeGb\":\"10\",
        \"diskType\":\"https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/myproject/zones/us-central1-f/diskTypes/pd-standard\",
        \"sourceImage\":\"https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/debian-cloud/global/images/debian-8-jessie-v20150818\"
      },
      \"mode\":\"READ_WRITE\",
      \"type\":\"PERSISTENT\"
    }],
    \"machineType\":\"https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/myproject/zones/us-central1-f/machineTypes/n1-standard-1\",
    \"metadata\":{
      \"items\":[]
    },
    \"name\":\"example-instance\",
    \"networkInterfaces\":[{
        \"accessConfigs\":[{
          \"name\":\"External NAT\",
          \"type\":\"ONE_TO_ONE_NAT\"
        }],
        \"network\":\"https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/myproject/global/networks/default\"
      }],
    \"scheduling\":{
      \"automaticRestart\":true,
      \"onHostMaintenance\":\"MIGRATE\",
      \"preemptible\":false
    },
    \"serviceAccounts\":[{
      \"email\":\"default\",
      \"scopes\":[
        \"https://www.googleapis.com/auth/devstorage.read_only\",
        \"https://www.googleapis.com/auth/logging.write\"
      ]
    }],
    \"tags\":{
      \"items\":[]
    },
    \"zone\":\"https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/myproject/zones/us-central1-f\"
  }"
}

"resource": {
  "type": "instance",
  "name": "example-instance",
  "id": "0",
  "zone": "us-central1-f"
}

trace_id: "operation-1442436581415-51fe3700bd85a-7fd317e3-f1a3555e"

Sample log entry

For example, a sample log entry describing an API request to create a VM looks like the following:

{
  "log": "compute.googleapis.com/activity_log",
  "insertId": "2015-09-16|13:49:42.532185-07|10.106.9.208|335899593",
  "metadata": {
    "severity": "INFO",
    "projectId": "835469197146",
    "serviceName": "compute.googleapis.com",
    "zone": "us-central1-f",
    "labels":{
      "compute.googleapis.com/resource_id":"0",
      "compute.googleapis.com/resource_name":"example-instance",
      "compute.googleapis.com/resource_type":"instance",
      "compute.googleapis.com/resource_zone":"us-central1-f"
    },
    "timestamp": "2015-09-16T20:49:42.423637Z"
  },
  "structPayload": {
    "version": "1.2",
    "trace_id": "operation-1442436581415-51fe3700bd85a-7fd317e3-f1a3555e",
    "event_timestamp_us": "1442436582423637",
    "event_type": "GCE_API_CALL",
    "event_subtype": "compute.instances.insert",
    "resource": {
      "type": "instance",
      "name": "example-instance",
      "id": "0",
      "zone": "us-central1-f"
    },
    "actor": {
      "user": "user@example.com"
    },
    "ip_address": "",
    "user_agent": "apitools-client/1.0",
    "request": {
      "url": "https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/myproject/zones/us-central1-f/instances",
      "body": "{
        \"canIpForward\":false,
        \"description\":\"\",
        \"disks\":[{
          \"autoDelete\":true,
          \"boot\":true,
          \"deviceName\":\"example-instance\",
          \"initializeParams\":{
            \"diskSizeGb\":\"10\",
            \"diskType\":\"https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/myproject/zones/us-central1-f/diskTypes/pd-standard\",
            \"sourceImage\":\"https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/debian-cloud/global/images/debian-8-jessie-v20150818\"
          },
          \"mode\":\"READ_WRITE\",
          \"type\":\"PERSISTENT\"
        }],
        \"machineType\":\"https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/myproject/zones/us-central1-f/machineTypes/n1-standard-1\",
        \"metadata\":{
          \"items\":[]
        },
        \"name\":\"example-instance\",
        \"networkInterfaces\":[{
            \"accessConfigs\":[{
              \"name\":\"External NAT\",
              \"type\":\"ONE_TO_ONE_NAT\"

            }],
            \"network\":\"https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/myproject/global/networks/default\"
          }],
        \"scheduling\":{
          \"automaticRestart\":true,
          \"onHostMaintenance\":\"MIGRATE\",
          \"preemptible\":false
        },
        \"serviceAccounts\":[{
          \"email\":\"default\",
          \"scopes\":[
            \"https://www.googleapis.com/auth/devstorage.read_only\",
            \"https://www.googleapis.com/auth/logging.write\"
          ]
        }],
        \"tags\":{
          \"items\":[]
        },
        \"zone\":\"https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/myproject/zones/us-central1-f\"
      }"
    },
    "operation": {
      "type": "operation",
      "name": "operation-1442436581415-51fe3700bd85a-7fd317e3-f1a3555e",
      "id": "291347737657178184",
      "zone": "us-central1-f"
    }
  }
}

Deprecated activity log entries

The following activity log entries will be discontinued, with no replacement, on June 1, 2020: