File support updates

Wildcard, recursion, and environment variable support for Windows files

You can now use Change Tracking and Inventory to detect changes and discover the configuration for Windows files through the use of recursion, wildcards, and environment variables. This enables you to track system critical files with settings such as %winDir%\System32\*.*or C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config\*.config. (Note that Linux support is already available for recursion and wildcards.)

To learn more about our updated support for Windows files, see Wildcard, recursion, and environment settings.

File content difference

For both Linux and Windows file changes, you can now view the changes in file content. The file content is written and stored securely to an Azure blob storage of the user’s selection. After you have configured the file content settings, you will see a button when drilling down into a file change in order to view the file content and the content difference that resulted from that change.

To learn more about the file content difference feature, see View the contents of a tracked file.

Windows services support updates

Adjustable collection frequency

You can now reduce the frequency at which your Windows services are collected. From the Change Tracking settings, you can adjust the frequency to any second value between the default of 30 minutes and the minimum of 10 seconds. Minimizing the collection frequency reduces loss in your system and bolsters the integrity of the change data you're receiving. However, this will increase the amount of data ingested in Log Analytics and may incur additional charges. (After data is collected, it typically takes 3-10 minutes to be ingested by Log Analytics. To learn more about ingestion time, see Data ingestion time in Log Analytics.)

To learn more about the adjustable collection frequency feature, see Windows service tracking.