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Simple Log Service:CloudLens for ALB (formerly ALB Log Center)

Last Updated:Oct 10, 2026

Simple Log Service (SLS) and Application Load Balancer (ALB) jointly offer CloudLens for ALB. This service helps you analyze Layer 7 logs, analyze metrics in seconds, and receive real-time alerts. It also provides automatic anomaly detection based on AIOps. CloudLens for ALB lets you understand client behavior, geographic distribution, request success rates, and response latency. This topic describes the features, assets, billing, and limits of CloudLens for ALB.

Features

CloudLens for ALB automatically aggregates real-time access logs and provides features such as intelligent inspection and real-time alerting.

  • Centrally manage all ALB instances under your Alibaba Cloud account.

  • Enable data collection for ALB access logs with a single click and manage the collection status of all instances.

  • Store, query, and analyze ALB access logs in real time.

  • Extract various metrics from raw access logs in real time. These metrics include page views (PVs), request success rate, average latency, P50 latency, P99 latency, and inbound and outbound traffic. You can also combine multiple dimensions, such as app_lb_id, host, and status.

  • Access rich visual reports, such as a monitoring center, real-time monitoring, and instance inspection. You can subscribe to reports by email or through DingTalk groups.

  • Use the intelligent inspection feature, which supports global and app_lb_id granularity inspections. You can also annotate anomalies directly in the visual reports.

  • Customize alert configurations. You can send alert notifications through Message Center, text messages, email, voice calls, or DingTalk. You can also integrate with custom webhooks.

功能说明

Benefits

  • Simple: Enable the service with a single click and manage it centrally. You do not need to manage log collection, storage, computing, or visualization. This frees up developers and O&M engineers from time-consuming log processing so they can focus on business development.

  • Scalable: The volume of access logs is proportional to the PVs of ALB instances. This can result in large amounts of data. Processing these logs requires balancing performance and cost.

  • Real-time: Scenarios such as DevOps, monitoring, and alerting require real-time log data. CloudLens for ALB, combined with the powerful big data computing capabilities of Simple Log Service, analyzes and processes logs in seconds.

    Important

    In 99.9% of cases, log latency does not exceed 3 minutes.

  • Flexible: Enable or disable the access log feature for each ALB instance. You can set any log storage period. The Logstore capacity scales dynamically to meet your business growth.

  • Intelligent: The service provides automatic inspection of ALB metrics based on AIOps algorithms from DAMO Academy. This helps you find and locate issues faster and more accurately.

Asset description

All assets are located in the project that you select. The assets in the project include the following:

  • Logstore

    • An access log Logstore that you create to store Layer 7 access logs from ALB.

    • An inspection result Logstore that stores inspection results. After you enable data collection, a dedicated Logstore named access_log_logstore_name-metrics-result is automatically created.

    Important
    • Do not delete the Logstore for ALB Layer 7 access logs. If you do, logs cannot be collected and shipped to Simple Log Service.

    • Do not delete the indexes of some fields in the access log Logstore. If you do, metric transformation will fail.

  • Metricstore

    A Metricstore that stores aggregated metric information. After you enable data collection, a dedicated Metricstore named access_log_logstore_name-metrics is automatically created.

    Note

    The Metricstore stores aggregated metrics. The data volume is much smaller than that of raw access logs, which makes it suitable for long-term storage.

  • Aggregation rules

    Rule name

    Time granularity

    Aggregation dimension

    Generated metric name

    total

    10s

    total

    • pv

    • body_bytes_sent_avg

    • body_bytes_sent_sum

    • request_length_avg

    • request_length_sum

    • upstream_response_time_avg

    • upstream_response_time_p50

    • upstream_response_time_p90

    • upstream_response_time_p99

    • request_time_avg

    • request_time_p50

    • request_time_p90

    • request_time_p99

    app_lb_id

    10s

    app_lb_id

    • pv:app_lb_id

    • body_bytes_sent_avg:app_lb_id

    • body_bytes_sent_sum:app_lb_id

    • request_length_avg:app_lb_id

    • request_length_sum:app_lb_id

    • upstream_response_time_avg:app_lb_id

    • upstream_response_time_p50:app_lb_id

    • upstream_response_time_p90:app_lb_id

    • upstream_response_time_p99:app_lb_id

    • request_time_avg:app_lb_id

    • request_time_p50:app_lb_id

    • request_time_p90:app_lb_id

    • request_time_p99:app_lb_id

    app_lb_id_host_status

    10s

    app_lb_id+host+status

    • pv:app_lb_id:host:status

    • body_bytes_sent_avg:app_lb_id:host:status

    • body_bytes_sent_sum:app_lb_id:host:status

    • request_length_avg:app_lb_id:host:status

    • request_length_sum:app_lb_id:host:status

    • upstream_response_time_avg:app_lb_id:host:status

    • upstream_response_time_p50:app_lb_id:host:status

    • upstream_response_time_p90:app_lb_id:host:status

    • upstream_response_time_p99:app_lb_id:host:status

    • request_time_avg:app_lb_id:host:status

    • request_time_p50:app_lb_id:host:status

    • request_time_p90:app_lb_id:host:status

    • request_time_p99:app_lb_id:host:status

  • Inspection rules

    Rule name

    Inspection algorithm

    Inspection metric

    alb-patrol-total

    Time2Graph

    • pv

    • body_bytes_sent_avg

    • body_bytes_sent_sum

    • request_length_avg

    • request_length_sum

    • upstream_response_time_avg

    • upstream_response_time_p50

    • upstream_response_time_p90

    • upstream_response_time_p99

    • request_time_avg

    • request_time_p50

    • request_time_p90

    • request_time_p99

    alb-patrol-alb

    Time2Graph

    • pv:alb

    • body_bytes_sent_avg:alb

    • body_bytes_sent_sum:alb

    • request_length_avg:alb

    • request_length_sum:alb

    • upstream_response_time_avg:alb

    • upstream_response_time_p50:alb

    • upstream_response_time_p90:alb

    • upstream_response_time_p99:alb

    • request_time_avg:alb

    • request_time_p50:alb

    • request_time_p90:alb

    • request_time_p99:alb

  • Dedicated dashboards

    Dashboard name

    Associated Logstore or Metricstore

    Description

    Monitoring Overview

    access_log_logstore_name-metrics

    Displays an overview of ALB instance monitoring metrics. The metrics include core indicators, error codes, traffic, anomalies, PVs, request success rate, and average latency.

    Monitoring Center

    • access_log_logstore_name-metrics

    • access_log_logstore_name

    Displays real-time monitoring data for the ALB instance. The data includes PVs, request success rate, average latency, number of 4xx requests, status distribution, traffic, P50 latency, P90 latency, P99 latency, top requested hosts, top latency hosts, top failure rate hosts, top requested URLs, top latency URLs, top failure rate URLs, top requested backends, top latency backends, and top failure rate backends.

    Real-time Monitoring

    access_log_logstore_name

    Displays monitoring information at a one-second granularity to help you identify transient jitter and anomalies. The information includes QPS, access latency, upstream latency, success rate, request traffic, response body traffic, 2xx status codes, 3xx status codes, error status codes, upstream 2xx status codes, upstream 3xx status codes, and upstream error status codes.

    Instance Inspection

    • access_log_logstore_name-metrics

    • access_log_logstore_name-metrics-result

    Automatically detects anomalies in the ALB instance based on machine learning algorithms provided by Simple Log Service. The metrics include total anomalies, high-severity anomalies, anomaly severity distribution, medium-severity anomalies, low-severity anomalies, anomaly metric distribution, anomaly list, and anomalies.

    Access Overview

    access_log_logstore_name

    Displays the overall status of the ALB instance. The metrics include PVs vs. yesterday, PVs vs. last week, UVs vs. yesterday, UVs vs. last week, PV distribution, UV distribution, today's PVs, 7-day PVs, top 10 provinces by access, mobile client ratio, top 10 hosts by access, top 10 user agents by access, and top IP addresses by access.

Billing

  • Application Load Balancer does not charge extra fees for the log management feature.

  • After you enable ALB access logs, Simple Log Service charges you for items such as storage space, read traffic, requests, data transformation, and data shipping. For more information, see Billable items of the pay-by-feature billing method.

Limits

  • The Simple Log Service project and the ALB instance must be in the same region.

  • CloudLens for ALB is available in the following regions.

    Cloud type

    Region

    Public cloud

    China (Qingdao), China (Beijing), China (Zhangjiakou), China (Ulanqab), China (Hangzhou), China (Shanghai), China (Nanjing-Local Region-Discontinued), China (Shenzhen), China (Guangzhou), China (Chengdu), China (Hong Kong), Singapore, Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur), Indonesia (Jakarta), Japan (Tokyo), US (Silicon Valley), US (Virginia), Germany (Frankfurt)

Notes

Warning

The CloudLens feature requires at least one project to exist under your Alibaba Cloud account.

When you enable and use CloudLens, Simple Log Service checks whether a project exists under your account using the following logic.

Detection logic

  1. When you enable the CloudLens feature for the first time, Simple Log Service checks whether a project exists under your Alibaba Cloud account. If no project exists, a project named aliyun-product-data-Alibaba Cloud account ID-cn-heyuan is created in the China (Heyuan) region.

  2. After you enable CloudLens and navigate to the CloudLens page, Simple Log Service only checks whether a project exists under your Alibaba Cloud account. It does not automatically create a project in the China (Heyuan) region. To create a project manually, see Manage projects.

Delete a project

  • To delete the aliyun-product-data-Alibaba Cloud account ID-cn-heyuan project, open Cloud Shell and run the following command. Replace Alibaba Cloud account ID with your actual account ID.

    aliyunlog log delete_project --project_name=aliyun-product-data-Alibaba Cloud account ID-cn-heyuan --region-endpoint=cn-heyuan.log.aliyuncs.com
  • To delete other projects and Logstores, see Manage Logstores and Manage projects.