Data Analytics with Treasure Data

This article explains how to use Treasure Data with Fluentd to aggregate semi-structured logs into Treasure Data (TD), which offers Cloud Data Service.

Background

Fluentd is an advanced open-source log collector originally developed at Treasure Data, Inc. Fluentd is specifically designed to solve the big-data log collection problem.

Treasure Data provides Cloud Data Service, which Fluentd users can use to easily store and analyze data on the cloud. Fluentd is designed to flexibly connect with many systems via plugins, but Treasure Data should be your top choice if you don't want to spend engineering resources maintaining your backend infrastructure.

This article will show you how to use Fluentd to receive data from HTTP and stream it into TD.

Architecture

The figure below shows the high-level architecture:

TreasureData Architecture

Install

For simplicity, this article will describe how to set up a one-node configuration. Please install the following software on the same node:

• Fluentd

• TD Output Plugin

The TD Output plugin is included in Fluentd's deb/rpm package (td-agent) by default. If you want to use RubyGems to install the plugin, please use gem install fluent-plugin-td.

• Debian Package

• RPM Package

• Ruby gem

Sign Up

Next, please sign up to TD and get your apikey using the td apikey:show command:

$ td account -f
Enter your Treasure Data credentials.
Email: [e-mail]
Password (typing will be hidden):
$ td apikey:show
kdfasklj218dsakfdas0983120

Fluentd Configuration

Let's start configuring Fluentd. If you used the deb/rpm package, Fluentd's config file is located at /etc/td-agent/td-agent.conf. Otherwise, it is located at /etc/fluentd/fluentd.conf.

HTTP Input

For the input source, we will set up Fluentd to accept records from HTTP. The Fluentd configuration file should look like this:

<source>
  @type http
  port 8888
</source>

Treasure Data Output

The output destination will be Treasure Data. The output configuration should look like this:

<match td.*.*>
  @type tdlog
  apikey YOUR_API_KEY_IS_HERE
  auto_create_table
  use_ssl true
  <buffer>
    @type file
    path /var/log/td-agent/buffer/td
  </buffer>
</match>

The match section specifies the regexp used to look for matching tags. If a matching tag is found in a log, then the config inside <match>...</match> is used (i.e. the log is routed according to the config inside).

Test

To test the configuration, just post the JSON to Fluentd. Sending a USR1 signal flushes Fluentd's buffer into TD:

$ curl -X POST -d 'json={"action":"login","user":2}' \
  http://localhost:8888/td.testdb.www_access
$ kill -USR1 `cat /var/run/td-agent/td-agent.pid`

Next, please use the td tables command. If the count is not zero, the data was imported successfully.

$ td tables
+----------+------------+------+-------+--------+
| Database | Table      | Type | Count | Schema |
+----------+------------+------+-------+--------+
| testdb   | www_access | log  |     1 |        |
+----------+------------+------+-------+--------+

You can now issues queries against the imported data:

$ td query -w -d testdb \
  "SELECT COUNT(1) AS cnt FROM www_access"
queued...
started at 2012-04-10T23:44:41Z
2012-04-10 23:43:12,692 Stage-1 map = 0%,  reduce = 0%
2012-04-10 23:43:18,766 Stage-1 map = 100%,  reduce = 0%
2012-04-10 23:43:32,973 Stage-1 map = 100%,  reduce = 100%
Status     : success
Result     :
+-----+
| cnt |
+-----+
|   1 |
+-----+

It is not advisable to send sensitive user information to the cloud. To assist with this need, out_tdlog comes with some anonymization systems. For more details, see Treasure Data plugin.

Conclusion

Fluentd + Treasure Data gives you a data collection and analysis system in days, not months. Treasure Data is a useful solution if you do not want to spend engineering resources maintaining the backend storage and analytics infrastructure.

Learn More

• Fluentd Architecture

• Fluentd Get Started

• Treasure Data

• Treasure Data: Documentation

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.