What are Logs?
In computing, a log is an automatically generated and time-stamped file containing information—a list of events, actions, and messages, and even errors—about the operation of a particular component in an IT infrastructure. Virtually all applications, devices, and systems produce log files, but the details captured and format used (text-based, structured, or proprietary) will be specific to each individual component.
How Are Logs Used?
Logs are typically used in two distinct ways:
• Diagnostics: Logs provide many details that can be difficult to gather after the fact, making them useful for troubleshooting.
• Auditing: Because logs provide a record of everything that happened and when, they can serve to demonstrate compliance with regulatory and other requirements.
Pros and Cons of Logs
Logs can deliver meaningful insight into the overall health of the elements operating within your IT infrastructure. And when there’s a problem, you can construct a timeline of events to facilitate troubleshooting. But there are some challenges. Because every component in an infrastructure of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of applications, devices, and systems generates a log of every event, action, and message, the volume of data produced can be astronomical. And with the wide variety of formats used, it can be hard to correlate all the individual log files of related components to get a more integrated—and accurate—view of your environment.
How Virtana Leverages Logs for Infrastructure Monitoring
Logs are just one of the data sources Virtana leverages—in addition to metrics, traces, flows, configuration data, and more—to deliver AI-driven actionable insights and robust observability in complex multi-vendor hybrid cloud infrastructures. By seamlessly analyzing massive amounts of telemetry from across the full infrastructure stack, Virtana reduces the complexity of monitoring global estates, enabling enterprises to predict issues, perform root cause analysis, and take automated actions to provide the best performance while optimizing capacity and cost across hybrid IT environments. Contact us to learn more or to book a demo.
Suggested Reading and Related Topics
• AIOps: Learn how AIOps ingests and processes to data to generate insights about IT operations
• IPM Guide—Infrastructure Observability: Understand role of log analysis and machine learning in observability.