Configuring logging to a text file
Updated: February 1, 2011
Applies To: Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG)
The following procedure describes how to save log information to a text file.
To configure logging to a text file
In the Forefront TMG Management console, in the tree, click the Logs & Reports node.
In the details pane, click the Logging tab.
On the Tasks tab, select the appropriate task:
Select Configure Firewall Logging to specify that the Firewall log should be written to a text file.
Select Configure Web Proxy Logging to specify that the Web Proxy log should be written to a text file.
On the Log tab, click File.
In Format, select the file format. By default, the W3C extended log file format is used. Alternatively, you can select Forefront TMG file format. W3C logs contain both data and directives describing the version, date, and logged field. Fields that are not selected for the log, do not appear in the log. The tab character is used as a delimiter. Date and time are in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The Forefront TMG file format contains only data with no directives. All fields are always logged. Fields that are not selected are logged with a dash (-), to indicate that they are empty. The comma character is used as a delimiter. The date and time fields are in the format of the local time setting configured on the server.
Click Options to configure storage settings.
Select ISALogs to store logs in the default location. To store files in an alternative location, click This folder, and specify the path.
Configure the log size, as follows:
Select Limit total size of log files and specify a maximum size. Each log file is limited to 1.5 GB. When a log file reaches 1.5 GB, a new file is automatically created.
Select Maintain free disk space and specify the free space.
Configure how logs are managed as follows:
Select Deleting older log files as necessary to specify that the oldest log files are deleted automatically in accordance with the specified size limits.
Select Discarding new log entries to stop logging new entries (while keeping all the old log information) in accordance with the specified size limits. New entries are not logged until you change limits or delete old files. An alert is issued to notify you of this event.
Select Delete files older than to delete log files older than the specified days. To delete old files from storage, decrease this number.
Select Compress log files to reduce log file size. Compression is only applied to log files stored on NTFS volumes.