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Azure Log Analytics workspace upgrades in progress

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Many of you are currently using Azure Log Analytics to monitor your environments for availability and performance. We want to let you know that we're rolling out new enhancements and changes for Log Analytics, including a new query language. To take advantage of these enhancements, you'll need to upgrade your workspaces. The upgrade is currently available in these regions: WCUS, EUS, SEAU, SEA, WEU, EJP, SUK, CID and CCAN.

The upgrade process converts all saved searches, alerts, and views to the new query language. Note that about half of all Azure Log Analytics workspaces have already been upgraded, so thousands of you are already working with the simple yet powerful query language.

Upgrading your workspace

This upgrade introduces an improved search experience, powered by a highly scalable platform. The new experience includes an interactive, expressive query language, and machine learning constructs. The upgrade also includes a portal for advanced analytics, offering a multiline query editor, a full schema view, and rich visualizations to help you get deeper insights from your data.

To take advantage of the following language benefits, upgrade your Log Analytics workspace:

  • Simple yet powerful. Easier to understand, and similar to SQL with constructs like a natural language.
  • Full piping language. Extensive piping capabilities, where any output can be piped to another command to create complex queries.
  • Search-time field extractions. With calculated fields at runtime, you can use complex calculations for extended fields, and then use them for additional commands including joins and aggregations.
  • Advanced joins. Ability to join tables on multiple fields by using inner and outer joins, and join on extended fields.
  • Date/time functions. Greater flexibility because of advanced date and time functions.
  • Smart Analytics. Advanced algorithms to evaluate patterns in data sets and compare different sets of data.
  • Learn more about the new query language.

Get the full details on how to upgrade your Log Analytics workspace.

To upgrade, you must have "Owner"? access management rights to the workspace.

For FairFax, note that the workspace upgrade and the new Log Analytics language are not yet available. The upgrade in FairFax will start in a few months, and a separate communication will be sent on it.

Changes to be aware of after you upgrade

Some experiences work differently after the workspace upgrade. You can find more details on these in known issues and FAQs.

  • My dashboard is being deprecated, in favor of View Designer and Azure Dashboards. Existing tiles become read-only.
  • Power BI integration is replaced with a new process. Any existing schedules will be disabled.
  • Azure Resource Manager templates can be used to create and configure Log Analytics workspaces. The versions of the upgraded API and examples of tasks you can perform are available here.
  • Alert actions using webhooks and runbooks will need to be updated to conform to a different response format. You can see a sample payload in the Alert actions article.
  • Log Search API and PowerShell Cmdlet are being deprecated on December 31, 2017. Any use of the Log Search API and the Get-AzureRmOperationalInsightsSearchResults Cmdlet should be migrated to the Azure Log Analytics REST API and the Invoke-LogAnalyticsQuery PowerShell Cmdlet. You can do so by using the new query language.

Upgrade rollout schedule

We are rolling out the upgrade to workspaces that have not been upgraded yet, according to this schedule:

  • New workspace creation (week of October 16, 2017). New workspaces are created with the new Log Analytics language. You cannot create legacy workspaces using the legacy language.
  • Automatic workspace upgrade (starting the week of October 30, 2017). We start rolling out automatic workspace upgrades—all workspaces that haven't been upgraded will be automatically upgraded to the new Log Analytics language. This process will be gradual per region, and carried out in this order:

Diagram of schedule for updates

Although the automatic upgrade in WCUS and WEU regions will start in a few months, you can follow the banner in your workspace to upgrade it now.

Already upgraded?

If you have upgraded your workspaces already, you don't need to worry about automatic upgrades.

Additional resources 

If you have questions, please contact us.

Yossi Yossifon

Senior PM, Operations Management Suite team