Azure Monitor helps you maximize the availability and performance of your applications and services. It delivers a comprehensive solution for collecting, analyzing, and acting on telemetry from your cloud and on-premises environments. This information helps you understand how your applications are performing and proactively identify issues affecting them and the resources they depend on.
Just a few examples of what you can do with Azure Monitor include:
The following diagram gives a high-level view of Azure Monitor. At the center of the diagram are the data stores for metrics and logs, which are the two fundamental types of data used by Azure Monitor. On the left are the sources of monitoring data that populate these data stores. On the right are the different functions that Azure Monitor performs with this collected data. This includes such actions as analysis, alerting, and streaming to external systems.
Azure Monitor agent is the way to collect text and IIS files for Log Analytics.
Today Microsoft is happy to introduce the long-awaited Custom Log and IIS Log collection capability. This new capability is designed to enable customers to collect their text-based logs generated in their service or application. Likewise, Internet Information Service (IIS) logs for a customers’ service can be collected and transferred into a Log Analytics Workspace table for analysis. These new collection types will enable customers to migrate from other competing data collection services to Azure Monitor.
Source: General availability: Azure Monitor agent custom and IIS logs