Glossary
NSG and VNet flow logs
Network Watcher logs of IP flows through network security groups or virtual networks: 5-tuple, direction, decision and byte counts, per minute.
Flow logs are Azure Network Watcher records of IP traffic. NSG flow logs cover one network security group; VNet flow logs cover a whole virtual network. Both are written to a storage account at one-minute intervals as tuples: timestamp, source and destination IP and port, protocol, direction, decision or flow state, and — for NSG version 2 and VNet flow logs — packets and bytes.
Microsoft has announced that NSG flow logs retire on September 30, 2027; VNet flow logs replace them. They carry no payloads.