Overview
In a distributed system, logs are scattered across many servers and containers. Log aggregation centralizes this data, making it possible to troubleshoot issues that span multiple services and to perform system-wide analysis.
Key Components
- Shippers/Agents: Small programs (e.g., Filebeat, Fluent Bit) that send logs from the source to the central server.
- Processors: Tools that parse and enrich logs (e.g., Logstash, Fluentd).
- Storage/Search: A database optimized for full-text search (e.g., Elasticsearch, OpenSearch).
- Visualization: A dashboard for querying and viewing logs (e.g., Kibana, Grafana).
Benefits
- Faster Troubleshooting: Search all logs from one place.
- Correlation: See how an error in one service affects others.
- Security: Identify suspicious patterns across the entire infrastructure.