What are logs?
Logs are system-generated data that record system status, performance, and connectivity. When companies use a specific IT system, they want to know if it is operational. Logs can record everything that is going on in the system and show what is wrong with it.
IT administrators and developers track service-level agreements, monitor system performance, and identify issues with logs. Companies use log monitoring software to collect and monitor files generated by servers, applications, and networks. This detects anomalies within the systems so the IT team can fix them instead of waiting for the anomalies to turn into bugs.
Companies also store logs with log analysis software so historical data can also be analyzed to predict future patterns.
Types of logs
Different systems and devices generate different logs. Here are the most common types of logs that companies track:
- Application logs: Every business application such as web server, email, database, and work-in-progress applications generate logs to show resource utilization and response time. If an issue is found within the file, IT teams can either debug in-house applications or allocate resources to third-party applications.
- Network logs: Routers, switches, and all network hardware logs inform the administrator of network availability and connectivity. IT admins will be alerted on network resource anomalies before they develop into network issues that might slow down the network.
- Endpoint logs: Connected workstations, laptops, desktops, mobile phones logs show user activities and device health. With remote work, tracking remote device status is important since most users will be on their endpoint devices in their homes.
- Operating system logs: Windows, Linux, and other operating systems by default generate system logs to show the health of the operating systems/servers and their interactions between networks, applications, hardware, and other components. Users can see what occurred on their operating systems to report and solve the issues accordingly.
- Internet of things (IoT) logs: IoT is hardware devices that exchange data with other devices through the internet. IoT collects data but they don’t have the memory space to make use of most of these data so they have to transfer to another storage location. IoT logs contain information about device components such as sensors and processors and data transferred in and out. IT admins can troubleshoot not only the IoT devices but also whatever the IoT device is monitoring (oil rigs, manufacturing tools, etc.).
Benefits of using logs
All IT-related troubleshooting would need logs to begin the investigation. It is very difficult to know what is going inside IT systems without them. There are various reasons to monitor and analyze logs:
- Serve as a single source of truth: Large enterprise IT infrastructures will generate thousands of logs. Therefore, most companies integrate tools to monitor them into their IT infrastructure. This allows them to see what is going with every IT system in a single dashboard.
- Allocate system resources: IT administrators or the log monitoring software can predict if the tracked systems need more resources based on data. If a web app needs more RAM and bandwidth due to increasing traffic, admins can do that before the web app bursts because it doesn’t have enough resources to handle the growing traffic.
- Prevent downtime and save money: By analyzing log data to predict current and future issues, companies can proactively solve them on time. This avoids business operation downtime and saves companies from losing revenue.
Writing logs best practices
Monitoring and analyzing logs is a long-term process that requires much consideration. To design a good log monitoring and analysis operation, companies should follow these best practices:
- Only monitoring what is necessary: If the company collects and stores every log data, they will be out of storage and RAM space for analysis. Companies should not only plan what logs they should monitor to get the best value but also determine how often they should clean up ones checked in the past.
- Contextualizing the log data: While different logs have different formats, the ones you track need to be tagged with unique identifiers to show why. A generic click on the website is different from a “purchase” click.
- Automatic event correlation or AIOps: There are simply too many moving parts within modern enterprise IT and cloud environments. One IT issue can relate to another one in different environments. Instead of looking for the issues manually, many companies now use log monitoring software and AIOps software to find the root cause of the problem. The software consumes all the log data and correlates them to show how one system affects another. This saves the IT team time to fix issues and decrease downtime.
Logs discussions on G2
Tian Lin
Tian is a research analyst at G2 for Cloud Infrastructure and IT Management software. He comes from a traditional market research background from other tech companies. Combining industry knowledge and G2 data, Tian guides customers through volatile technology markets based on their needs and goals.
