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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-15T20:51:42+00:00

I want to be able to dynamically control the level of logging my Azure

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I want to be able to dynamically control the level of logging my Azure cloud-based applications perform. To do this I’m creating a shared log4net-based DLL.

There are lots of questions about log4net logging but almost all of them involve entering and manipulating settings in a config file or other text file. In the Azure cloud, changing the web.config means redeploying. I want to change the logging by making web service calls into the applications from an admin portal.

I also have several applications and I want each to use my new log4net-based DLL without having to store identical settings such as Appender details in each config file. The applications log the same, consistent data.

I do not want to use the Azure diagnostics because this will reduce performance of this large user base application. In addition, I want to reduce logging and diagnostics to a minimum (or disable completely) and only enable them at various levels to debug production problems or take snapshots of their performance. I don’t want to redeploy my apps.

What’s the best approach?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I would recommend not storing log4net configuration in web/app.config files but rather in a different file that can be updated externally (ie: in blob storage) and location of which can be dynamically changed from the Service Config or contents of which can be changed w/o redeploying.

    Look into the log4net.Config.XmlConfigurator.Configure method. You can pass it many different parameters instead of just calling it with no parameters (no parameters default method reads from app.config files).

    One way to do what you want is to pass that Configure method a public URL of a config file stored in your Azure storage. Location of the config file can be controlled from the Service Config.

    Alternatively if you do not want to make the config file public, you can implement your own reader of the XML config from some private location in storage and pass the XML document to the Configure() method instead.

    Check for more information here:
    http://logging.apache.org/log4net/release/manual/configuration.html

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