Configuring NLog for writing to a network file path in an ASP.NET Core MVC Application

Question

We are attempting to load balance an ASP.NET Core MVC application that uses NLog to log using File Target. The load-balanced setup will have multiple application servers, and the plan is to store the logs in a network drive. We are reviewing the Performance Tuning Options in the following link

https://github.com/NLog/NLog/wiki/File-target

and came up with the following configuration.

<targets async="true">
    <target type="File" name="logfile" fileName="${basedir}/logs/${level}.txt" keepFileOpen="false" networkWrites ="true" />
</targets>

<rules>
    <logger name="*" minlevel="Debug" writeTo="logfile" />
</rules>

Are there any way to optimize the configuration. Any recommendation is highly appreciated

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

keepFileOpen="false" and networkWrites="true" have the same meaning, and NLog-project is moving towards marking networkWrites as obsolete to remove duplicate logic. So you should just use keepFileOpen="false".

If multiple applications are going to write to the same log-file-path, then you should also enable concurrentWrites="true" since it will apply concurrentWriteAttempts="10". So when the shared log-file is momentarily locked by other application for log-writing, then retry-logic will be applied.

But very good idea to apply <targets async="true"> to avoid being hit by the network-outage.

See also: https://github.com/NLog/NLog/wiki/File-target