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Parsing Windows Media Services 9 Log Files

Windows Media Services (WMS) logging is a very broad and complex subject, but it is covered in depth by this white paper about the Logging Model for Windows Media Service 9 Series from Microsoft. What can be tricky about WMS logs is that they contain multiple kinds of log entries, some of which represent cache hits, cache misses, server data, etc. This means that naively counting hits will give false results, so I recommend strongly reading the white paper before embarking on any kind of expedition for parsing WMS logs. 

I am not an expert in parsing log files, or in Windows Media Server logs, but Microsoft does provide a useful free power-tool called LogParser, which can be useful for slicing and dicing your Media Server logs. LogParser is the swiss army knife of logging tools, and has entire sites dedicated to it by its fans ( http://www.logparser.com - the unofficial logparser site ).

I have provided the following links to help you gather information on WMS logging, and Log Parser so that you can be better equipped to parse your log files.

• Official Microsoft Logparser Site
• Directly download Log Parser from the Microsoft Download Center
• How Logparser 2.2 Works - A better explanation of how to use the tool by the author Gabriele Giuseppini.
• Creating Log Analysis Tools for Windows Media Services 9
• Tales from the Script January 2005 a TechNet article on LogParser
• Analyzing Denial of Service Attacks using LogParser 2.2
• Windows Media Server Home Page
• Log Types - Detailed information about the fields in the log
• Windows Media Services 9 Series FAQ
• Unofficial Logparser Site
• SQL Tutorial
• Creating a Windows Media Services Plugin
• Logging Model for Winwdows Media Service 9 Series.
• Supplemental Logging Information about WMS - This isn't particularly relevant, but it does show some WMS hacking using JScript.
• Microsoft Log Parser Toolkit - Buy the book by Gabriele Giuseppini and Mark Burnett

I hope you find these links useful!