Send Apache Logs to Minio

This article explains how to use Fluentd to aggregate and transport Apache logs to a Minio server.

Prerequisites

The following software/services are required to be set up correctly:

• Fluentd

• Minio (S3 Compatible Storage)

• Apache (with the Combined Log Format)

You can install Fluentd via major packaging systems.

• Installation

Install plugin

If out_s3 (fluent-plugin-s3) is not installed yet, please install it manually.

See Plugin Management section how to install fluent-plugin-s3 on your environment.

If you use fluent-package, out_s3 (fluent-plugin-s3) is bundled by default.

Configuration

Input Settings

In this example, we use the access log file as an input source, so save the following <source> settings to /etc/fluent/fluentd.conf:

<source>
  @type tail
  format apache2
  path /var/log/apache2/access.log
  pos_file /var/log/fluent/apache.access.log.pos
  tag minio.apache.access
</source>

NOTE: If you are using the standalone version of Fluentd, use /etc/fluent/fluent.conf instead.

Before proceeding, please confirm that the access log file has proper file permission. If the log file is not readable by the fluent-package/fluentd, the rest of this article will not work.

Output Settings

Now let's add settings for storing the incoming data in your Minio server. Since Minio is compatible with Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), we can use the out_s3 plugin to connect to the server.

<match minio.apache.**>
  @type s3
  aws_key_id ACCESS_KEY         # The access key for Minio
  aws_sec_key SECRET_KEY        # The secret key for Minio
  s3_bucket BUCKET_NAME         # The bucket to store the log data
  s3_endpoint ENDPOINT          # The endpoint URL (like "http://localhost:9000/")
  s3_region us-east-1           # See the region settings of your Minio server
  path logs/                    # This prefix is added to each file
  time_slice_format %Y%m%d%H%M  # This timestamp is added to each file name

  <buffer time>
    @type file
    path /var/log/fluent/s3
    timekey 60m                 # Flush the accumulated chunks every hour
    timekey_wait 1m             # Wait for 60 seconds before flushing
    timekey_use_utc true        # Use this option if you prefer UTC timestamps
    chunk_limit_size 256m       # The maximum size of each chunk
  </buffer>
</match>

After adding the settings to the conf file, please restart the Fluentd daemon.

Test the Settings

Use curl to generate some log data for testing:

$ curl http://localhost/

Or you can use the Apache Bench for the bulk request generation:

$ ab -n 100 -c 10 http://localhost/

Wait until the data gets flushed from the buffer (you can adjust the flush interval using the timekey and timekey_wait options above). Then you will see the aggregated log data on Minio:

Minio

Learn More

• Fluentd Architecture
• Amazon S3 Output plugin

If this article is incorrect or outdated, or omits critical information, please let us know. Fluentd is an open-source project under Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). All components are available under the Apache 2 License.