Viewing instance activity

You can analyze activity by viewing the serial port output and instance lifecycle events of an instance.

Viewing instance lifecycle events

All lifecycle and system events that affect the state of a VM instance are captured in the Cloud Audit Log. Lifecycle events include:

• Deleting an instance
• Creating an instance
• Stopping an instance
• Resetting an instance
• Suspending an instance
• Resuming an instance

System events include:

• Automatic restart of an instance
• Guest OS shutdown
• Host error
• Instance migration due to host maintenance
• Instance termination due to host maintenance

To view these events for a selected instance, zone, or entire project, do the following:

1. In the Project Explorer tool window, right-click a VM instance and select Show event log.

   It might take several seconds for the event log data to load.

2. In the Event Log window, you can browse the events in reverse chronological order

   

3. Optionally, double-click an event to view details in the Logs viewer

Viewing the serial port output

To analyze activity of the operating system running on the VM instance, you can inspect the VM instance's serial ports:

• Serial port 1 (COM1) contains boot output as well as diagnostic information emitted by agents
• Serial port 3 (COM3) is commonly used by Windows Setup when performing in-place upgrades of Windows Server
• Serial port 4 (COM4) is used by agents to communicate with tools, for example when createing a Windows user account

To view Serial port 1 (COM1) if an instance, do the following:

1. In the Project Explorer tool window, right-click a VM instance and select Connect:

2. The Serial log window shows the serial port output:

   

To view other serial ports, select View > Serial port output in the main menu and select the serial port to view.

What's next

• Learn how you can view instance details
• Find out how to Analyze VM instance usage