The more information you have on your business and its operations, the easier it is to make the right decisions about your tech stack, your future, and your current investments. That’s why data has quickly emerged as one of the most valuable assets any business can have.
Data comes in many forms, and it’s all valuable. However, one particular area that some companies have been focusing more on recently are IIS log files. IIS log files can offer valuable insights into the use and performance of the applications that your company runs on the web. However, it’s not always easy to track down and analyze your log files. Today, we’re going to look at some of the business benefits that come with having completely centralized IIS log analysis options.
Where are IIS Log Files Located?
To understand the benefits of centralizing your IIS log files, let’s start by looking at where these files are usually stored. Microsoft IIS log files are usually found within a Windows Standard Server in your System Drive, under the inetpub logs environment. It’s quite common for IT personnel and administrators to switch the directory where information is stored if the requirements of your business suddenly change. In these circumstances, it’s essential that users can find the files they need to monitor application health properly and troubleshoot any problems.
Having easy access to the correct log files makes it easy to find information for data governance and cybersecurity purposes. It also means that it’s easier to respond quickly to issues in your network environment because you can see the root cause of bottlenecks and negative trends.
It’s common for individual departments within a company to have different versions of the IIS solution within their organization. Sometimes, cloud offerings of IIS save their log files in different locations too, which creates an even more dispersed environment. However, centralizing that information into a single and unified dashboard that works across all aspects of the IIS environment can make life a lot easier for business owners with the following benefits:
Quicker Comparisons
When you have a single dashboard for all of your IIS log file metrics in your business, you can conduct quicker comparisons between applications, and see what’s performing best in your enterprise. Organizations can also use this information to determine how a spike in the use of a single application and affect the performance of another and so on.
It’s very difficult to rapidly compare metrics and information in a similar way when your IIS log data is stored in a variety of different places. Intuitive graphics like pie charts, bar diagrams, and other comparisons can be used in a centralized environment to simplify the comparisons that you make and help with better decision making.
Real-Time Analytics
A centralized dashboard that you can use to examine your IIS log files is excellent for some of the real-time and advanced analytics that help you to get real value out of your data. Organizations of all sizes can determine the trends as they happen in their environment, and even predict trends with new machine learning analytics.
The overall impact of this real-time analytics offering is that you can also access an improved strategy for monitoring cybersecurity issues in your network too. This helps to decrease the number of data breaches and the damage that these breaches can cause for companies of all sizes.
Continuous Alerts and Monitoring
Assembling IIS log files into a single dashboard environment is crucial for monitoring all of your data on a consistent basis. This is important for any business with ongoing event-based data that’s common with a lot of web-based applications. It’s a lot more practical to implement consistent monitoring into web-based solutions when they’re centralized into a uniform dashboard than when they’re spread over various locations and directories.
Centralizing your log files with IIS for consistent monitoring purposes will also help you to set up notifications that allow you to make your information actionable. With a single view of your IIS log files, your alerts will be based not just on what happens to a single application, but what happens when numerous applications interact.
