[syslog-ng] The syslog-ng Insider 2024-01: HTTP; Cloudflare; systemd-journal; Humio / Logscale;

[Peter Czanik (pczanik)]

Dear syslog-ng users,

This is the 116th issue of syslog-ng Insider, a monthly newsletter that brings you syslog-ng-related news.

NEWS

Why use a http()-based destination in syslog-ng?
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Logging is not just syslog anymore. Still, many syslog-ng users stick to using one of the syslog protocols for log transport and flat files for log storage. While most SIEMs and log analytics tools can receive syslog messages or read them using their own agents, in most cases, you can use the http() destination of syslog-ng as well to send logs to them. You gain extreme performance and an architecture that is easier to maintain.

Some of the drivers in syslog-ng built on top of the http() destination include elasticsearch-http() destination for sending logs to Elasticsearch / OpenSearch. Many other services utilizing the Elasticsearch Bulk API exist, and there are also others using Sumo Logic, Splunk, and so on. Of course, there are some destinations where performance is not a major concern (or can even be a drawback, in fact). For example,various instant messaging services used for alerting (like Telegram or Slack) belong in this category. You can also read the API docs and write a new destination based on http() yourself.
https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/why-use-a-http--based-destination-in-syslog-ng 

An overview of Cloudflare's logging pipeline
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One of the roles of Cloudflare's Observability Platform team is managing the operation, improvement, and maintenance of our internal logging pipelines. These pipelines are used to ship debugging logs from every service across Cloudflare’s infrastructure into a centralised location, allowing our engineers to operate and debug their services in near real time. In this post, we’re going to go over what that looks like, how we achieve high availability, and how we meet our Service Level Objectives (SLOs) while shipping close to a million log lines per second.
https://blog.cloudflare.com/an-overview-of-cloudflares-logging-pipeline/ 

Working with multiple systemd-journal namespaces in syslog-ng
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Initial support for systemd-journal namespaces is available in syslog-ng 3.29. However, only version 4.4.0 allows you to work with multiple namespaces in your syslog-ng configuration.

So, what changed in the latest version of syslog-ng? Previously, you could only configure a single systemd-journal() source in syslog-ng. By default, it collected logs from all namespaces, but you could configure it to collect log messages from a single one exclusively. This means that logs from other namespaces could not be collected by syslog-ng. Version 4.4.0 allows you to use multiple systemd-journal() source drivers in the configuration, as long as each source uses a unique namespace.
https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/working-with-multiple-systemd-journal-namespaces-in-syslog-ng 

Logging to Humio / Logscale simplified in syslog-ng
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Logging into Humio (which was recently re-branded to Falcon LogScale) was available for years, using their Elasticsearch compatible API. However, according to Humio developers, it is slightly slower than other APIs for log ingestion. Axoflow contributed a Logscale destination to syslog-ng, which uses Logscale’s native API. I did not measure if there is really a performance difference, however it is definitely easier to configure it.


WEBINARS

* You can browse recordings of past webinars at https://www.syslog-ng.com/events/

Your feedback and news, or tips about the next issue are welcome. To read this newsletter online, visit: https://syslog-ng.com/blog/

Peter Czanik (CzP) <peter.czanik at oneidentity.com>
Balabit (a OneIdentity company) / syslog-ng upstream
https://syslog-ng.com/community/
https://twitter.com/PCzanik