Excluding Unwanted Messages from Client Logs

Some protocols can be chatty in nature and can generate a high volume of messages that do not indicate an error but are not excluded by disabling non-significant logs. These extraneous messages clutter the log and can unnecessarily reduce the overall health score of the virtual service.

As an example, applications that use NT LAN Manager (NTLM) to authenticate access to protected resources can generate a high volume of 401 Unauthorized messages. These are HTTP responses from the server that have status code 401. NTLM uses 401 messages during the authentication process. When a client requests a resource that is secured by NTLM, the protocol responds with a 401 message to challenge the client for the credentials required to access the resource. Each time NTLM re-authenticates access to the same resource, more 401 messages are generated.

To exclude unnecessary messages from the client logs of the virtual service, configure a filter within the analytics profile used by the virtual service.

Exclude HTTP Status Codes from Client Logs

To exclude HTTP responses that have a specific status code (such as 401), edit the Analytics Profile used by the virtual service.

1. Access the analytics profile used by the virtual service:

   1. Navigate to Applications > Virtual Services.

   2. Click the edit icon next to the virtual service name.

   3. Click the Analytics tab.

   4. Select the Application Profile from the Analytics Profile drop-down menu and click the edit icon. This opens the configuration popup for the profile. (If creating a new analytics profile, select Create from the Analytics Profile drop-down menu).

2. Enter the error code to exclude (in this example, 401) in the Exclude HTTP Status codes from Error Classification field. (If creating a new profile, also enter a name in the Name field).

3. Click Save.

   If a new profile was created, make sure to add the profile to the virtual service. By default, the system default analytics profile (System-Analytics-Profile) is attached to a virtual service.

   If preferred, the configuration popup for an analytics profile can be accessed without going through the virtual service configuration. Navigate to Templates > Profiles > Analytics. Click the edit icon next to the profile name, or click Create to create a new profile.