what are this tables created by diagnostics?

Question

Azure Diagnostic creates many tables, apparently containing the same performance counters but for different days. Why does it create so many tables, and how can I delete them?

Answer 1

When Azure application is build you can enable or disable diagnostics in role configuration file:

When diagnostics is enabled, all Verbose monitoring data (logs) will be periodically copied over to Azure tables (bear in mind that in production system you will have to provision storage account separately as it does not happen automatically).

For each cloud service deployment, six tables are created for the role. Two tables are created for each: 5 minutes, 1 hour, and 12 hours. One of these tables stores role-level aggregations; the other table stores aggregations for role instances.

The table names have the following format:

WAD*deploymentID*PT*aggregation_interval*[R|RI]Table

where:

• deploymentID is the GUID assigned to the cloud service deployment
• aggregation_interval = 5M, 1H, or 12H
• role-level aggregations = R
• aggregations for role instances = RI

Examples:

• WAD8b7c4233802442b494d0cc9eb9d8dd9fPT1HRTable - hourly aggregations for the role
• WAD8b7c4233802442b494d0cc9eb9d8dd9fPT1HRITable - hourly aggregations for role instances