There’s no question that log aggregation and log management have evolved in the past few years. Thanks to this tech-evolution, the majority of people know how to create a quality effective log strategy by using automated responses, visualization tools and real-time analysis, like what’s provided by Papertrail as well as similar tools.
However, regardless of if logs are from your apps, switches or servers, they can be hard to love and even more challenging to use.
While this may be true, logs are also more important than ever before. If you haven’t yet updated the logging strategy you use from the one you used a decade ago, then you may be missing out on the superior visibility this offer. You may also be facing serious problems you aren’t able to solve.
In the past, before microservices and containers, before distributed systems, before big data, and before the cloud – log management was simple and pretty straightforward. Every machine and application in your infrastructure produced a log (of some type). Chances are, you didn’t look at these too often. In fact, chances are, you only paid attention to them when you had an issue to research, and it was necessary to look through the logs available.
As mentioned before, times have changed. This is no longer effective, and it won’t help you increase your company’s productivity or efficiency.
Logs, Log Management and Log Aggregation Today: What You Should Know
While logs in the past were simple and not often used, today, they have become something beyond just a tool that is used to determine why something broke or malfunctioned after an issue took place.
Today, logs provide the basis for real-time detection of the available problems and security threats, automated responses to issues, and automated policy configuration.
This means that today, logs represent the foundation for all automated, real-time workflows. When it comes to hosting modern workloads at scale, logs are invaluable.
How You Can Make the Most of Your Logs
Due to the complexity of the modern environments, as well as the logs they generate, to use logs effectively requires a new, more innovative approach from the one that worked during the 1990s or the 2000s.
Today it is crucial that you do several things to utilize the information and benefits provided by the logs. These things include:
- Perform log aggregation by collecting your logs from several hosts or systems and then feed them into a central location for analysis and storage.
- Utilize automated analysis tools to help you understand the log information in real time.
- Leverage the right tools and resources to help you visualize log data and make it easier to find trends in the information.
- Optimize the log format to help maximize readability by machines and humans.
- Insert unique identifiers in the logs, so you are aware of what events correlate with the services, applications, users and hosts.
It’s important to note that these factors are crucial in the modern, challenging environments present where software-defined everything makes it more challenging to map objects and events.
When you use a logging strategy that uses the points above, it will help you make the most from the logs you have available. In the long run, this will help you modernize your log aggregation and your log management strategy.
By putting in the time and effort to effectively optimize your log strategy and implement new, modern tools, you can utilize the information provided to help make your business more efficient and more productive.
