Logs are like digital footprints or a letter that developers write to themselves for the future. They track every action or event that takes place within software, applications, and IT infrastructure. They provide important information, such as when an action happened, the host name, the type of action, and the application used.
Sometimes you must retrace your or a user’s steps to determine where something went wrong … or where it could start going wrong. Unfortunately, technical teams may have to sift through several systems’ worth of logs because systems and applications create logs for every action, error, file request, or file transfer that occurred within them. Log management makes the whole process less painful and time consuming.
How Do You Manage Logs?
There are five steps to log management:
What Is a Log Management System?
A log management system provides your team a single place to compile and store all your logs across servers, applications, and devices. From there, you can parse, analyze, and organize your logs as needed. Log management tools help DevOps teams monitor and improve a system’s performance by identifying issues, bugs, and security breaches (or attempted ones) and alerting the appropriate people who can address them.
Cloud-based log management systems can be accessed anywhere at any time. They also compile all logs into one platform so that you don’t have to sort through several systems and applications to find what you need. Thanks to the elastic nature of the cloud, they offer scalability to help manage the seasonality of data.
Why Is Log Management Important?
Log management allows your IT and your security teams to:
To get the most out of your logs, lean on log management and log analytics tools with the capabilities to help you build and maintain secure and reliable applications.
About the Author
Manas Sharma is a Principal Product Manager at Sumo Logic responsible for logs and log analytics. Manas has more than 23 years of experience in the technology industry, with a wealth of knowledge and expertise in networking, embedded systems, network management, and observability. Manas has grown from an engineer executing cutting-edge projects to leading various product initiatives as a product manager while working at companies such as Network Programs, Broadcom, 4RF, Symbol, and HPE.