CloudBerry lab is trying to keep up with the fascinating pace of the innovations that are rapidly introduced by Amazon Web Services team.  We are excited about the introduction of CloudFront Access log and glad to announce that we support it in CloudBerry Explorer

What is CloudFront Access logging?

CloudFront access log helps you to understand what kind of request served by your CloudFront distributions over time. Access logs are activity records that show you details about every request delivered through Amazon CloudFront. It is similar to the log file that popular web servers such as Apache or MS IIS generate. With the log file you can get feel of the nature of request for your content.

How to turn on Amazon CloudFront log

Just select the bucket configured for CloudFront and click the logging on the toolbar. Check Use CloudFront Access Logs option; specify the prefix and the bucket where you want the log files to be written.

Note: you can specify somebody a bucket from another Amazon S3 account; just make sure you have proper permissions set.  Just make sure that the owner of the CloudFront distribution has a write access to the bucket.

How to view CloudFront logs

Once you turn on your logs they will start coming up in the bucket you configured it for. Logs will typically be written every hour.  Files are coming in and they are compressed using GZip to save some space.  CloudFront Access Logs will use the W3C extended format (http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-logfile.html). An example of the content of your bucket where the log files are located is shown below:  CloudBerry Explorer allows you to view files in the raw format.  

Or you can switch to the log viewer format that will help you to view your log files in the grid, sort and filter. It

You can also view a simple chart that shows you the number of requests/ number of bytes per day.

Another useful chart shows the breakdown of the activity by CloudFront edge locations. 

Is there more advanced way to analyze CloudFront logs

Yes! There are multiple tools out there that will help you to slice and dice CloudFront logs. Good Data provides Amazon CloudFront Analytics online. If you incline to desktop based product I would suggest SiSense Prism Viewer with Amazon S3 dashboard.

Conclusion

With the addition of CloudFront access log support in CloudBerry lab demonstrates ongoing commitment to make the most comprehensive solution for Amazon S3 and CloudFront services. CloudBerry Explorer is becoming a compelling tool that helps users to accomplish their tasks in the most efficient way. 

• Manage CloudFront Access Log with CloudBerry Explorer Freeware