Author: Paul Watkins
There is wide agreement between Industry Analysts and vendors that there are, at least, three key pillars for Observability:
· Metrics
· Logs
· Traces
The collection of that data is performed to enable organisations who invest in Observability solutions to more quickly identify, understand and resolve application or service impacting issues in their IT environment. The collection of these data elements not only helps users to quickly identify that there is an issue but also provides sufficient context to enable them to understand and more quickly resolve it.
IBM Instana has been able to collect log data since the introduction of its native tracer technology; however, feedback from our customer base is that this, whilst highly valuable, left a gap in the logging capabilities that our new, generally available Logs in Context addresses.
IBM Instana Logs in Context
IBM Instana – Logs in Context allows you to react faster when it matters. Integrating logs into IBM Instana dramatically enhances your ability to reduce mean time to resolve issues that affect your ability to deliver service. The addition of the ability to generate issues from any consumed log adds significantly to this value.
Generic logs can be consumed from any source capable of emitting logs through Open Telemetry. In addition, we provide sample configurations to consume logs from environments such as OpenShift, Linux, and Microsoft Windows. At the time of collection, IBM Instana automatically correlates the logs to the relevant traces and/or infrastructure entities. This requires no manual labour or vendor specific instrumentation and contributes to the elimination of blind spots.
Once consumed and correlated, the logs can be analysed in context using the IBM Instana “Unbounded Analytics” interface leveraging the same search capabilities across metrics, traces and now logs enabling SREs to understand whether logs, traces and metrics are connected. Unbounded Analytics enables users to search based on any attribute of the log (Level, Message, Stream, Custom Tags, Snapshot, Trace Ids and Exceptions).
IBM Instana integrates logs from:
· Docker and containerd
· Java, Node.js, Go, Python, Ruby, PHP
· Any log via OpenTelemetry
Increasing the coverage from cloud native (Kubernetes, Docker, Java, node.js and Go) to other host-based logs with the ability to extend the retention of logs data for 30, 60 or 90 days.
The IBM Instana – Logs in Context Add-on is generally available as of 22 October 2024. The following capabilities have been delivered:
· Infrastructure Logs from any source in Host Context
o Ingest any log file in OpenTelemetry format
o Ingest any container platform in OpenTelemtry format
o Logs associated with Host and File
o Logs associated with Container
· Unbounded Analytics
o Analytics of log patterns
o Analytics of logs tags
o Custom Dashboards for logs and tags (keys)
· Events and Alerts
o SmartAlerts based on log patterns
o SmartAlerts based on log tags (keys)
· Log Visibility
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- Log retention – 30, 60 or 90 days
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- Log volume ingestion in Gb
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