Azure Log Analytics workspace upgrades are in progress

If you’re currently using Azure Log Analytics to monitor your environments for availability and performance, we’re rolling out new enhancements and changes for Log Analytics that you should be aware of. Including the new and improved query language, so that you can take appropriate action, if necessary. 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. ​About 50 percent of all Azure Log Analytics workspaces have been upgraded by now, and thousands of customers are enjoying 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 and expressive query language, machine learning constructs and a portal for advanced analytics, offering a multiline query editor, full schema view and rich visualizations to help you get deeper insights from your data. Learn more about the new query language.

To take advantage of the following language benefits and more, you’ll need to 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 that were possible previously.
• Search-time field extractions. Calculated fields at runtime lets you 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, using inner and outer joins, and join on extended fields.
• Date/time functions. Advanced date/time functions that gives you greater flexibility.
• Smart Analytics. Advanced algorithms to evaluate patterns in datasets and compare different sets of data.
• See more information in “Why the new language?”.

Notes:

• To execute the upgrade process, you must be assigned with Owner access management rights to the workspace​.
• The workspace upgrade and the new Log Analytics language are not available in FairFax currently. The upgrade in FairFax will start in a few months and a separate communication will be sent on it.

Experience changes after you upgrade

Some experiences work differently after the workspace upgrade. We made an effort to make these changes clear to let you make the necessary actions, if needed. You can find more details on these in known issues and FAQs page.

• 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. ​
• ARM 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 sample payload in Alert actions article.
• Deprecation of Log Search API and PowerShell Cmdlet (December 31, 2017). Any use of Log Search API and Get-AzureRmOperationalInsightsSearchResults Cmdlet should be migrated to Azure Log Analytics REST API and Invoke-LogAnalyticsQuery PowerShell Cmdlet using the new query language.

Upgrade rollout schedule

The new Log Analytics language change and deprecation of the old language, requires that all workspaces are upgraded. We are rolling out the upgrade to workspaces that were not 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 (start on the week of October 30, 2017). We will 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:

Notes:

• If you have upgraded your workspaces already, you don’t need to worry about automatic upgrades.
• Although the automatic upgrade in WCUS and WEU regions will start in a few months, you can follow the banner in your workspace and upgrade it now.

Additional resources:

• New and improved Log Analytics announcement
• Azure Log Analytics query language
• Known issues and FAQs
• Log Analytics documentation
• How to upgrade
• Known issues and frequently asked questions

If you have questions, please contact us.

Source: Big Data