Send Syslog Data to Sematext
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is a tool for managing logs, and considered an alternative to Splunk, but with cheaper and more flexible . In this article, we present an alternative to Splunk by combining Fluentd with the Sematext open Elasticsearch API.
is an open source search engine known for its ease of use. runs and manages Elasticsearch in the cloud. You also have the option to use alongside the dashboards in the Sematext UI.
By combining Fluentd and Sematext's managed Elasticsearch + Kibana you get a scalable, flexible, easy to use log management tool and search engine with an intuitive native web UI. You also get Kibana, if you want to use it. This provides a managed Splunk alternative, for a fraction of the cost.
In this guide, we'll cover the installation, setup, and basic use of this log management solution. This setup was tested on Ubuntu 18.04. If you're not familiar with Fluentd, please learn more about Fluentd first.
The following software/services are required to be set up correctly:
You can install Fluentd via major packaging systems.
Now you'll configure the fluent-package (Fluentd) to interface properly with Elasticsearch. Please edit /etc/fluent/fluentd.conf as shown below:
Once everything has been set up and configured, start fluentd:
rsyslogdFinally, configure forwarding logs from your rsyslogd to Fluentd. Create /etc/rsyslog.d/90-fluentd.conf, and restart rsyslog. This will forward your local syslog to Fluentd, and Fluentd will forward the logs to Sematext:
Please restart the rsyslog service once the modification is complete:
Once Fluentd receives logs from rsyslog and ships them to Sematext, you can view, search and visualize the log data using prebuilt Dashboards, by creating custom Dashboards, or with Kibana.
First of all, open up the Sematext UI and access your App. You'll see prebuilt dashboards with full-text search, filters, and alerts out-of-the-box.
Sematext will automatically figure out hosts, idents, pids, timestamps, and the origin of the logs. In this case the origin is Fluentd.
After you start receiving logs, you can create custom charts, reports, and alerts to fine-tune your own personal use-case.
To manually send logs to Sematext, please use the logger command:
This how-to guide introduced an alternative SaaS tool to use instead of Splunk. The combination of Fluentd and Sematext, with an open Elasticsearch API and Kibana, gives you tooling you are used to, with the added benefit of not having to manage an Elasticsearch cluster.
You'll get access to storing and searching logs from infrastructure, apps, and software. The example provided in this article has been tested for the current production environments of Sematext.
You need to and create an App. Read more in the docs .
If (fluent-plugin-elasticsearch) is not installed yet, please install it manually.
See section how to install fluent-plugin-elasticsearch on your environment.
If you are used to Kibana, you can still use it as well. For more details, read .
When debugging your fluent-package configuration, using will be useful. All the logs including errors can be found at /etc/fluent/fluentd.log.
If this article is incorrect or outdated, or omits critical information, please . is an open-source project under . All components are available under the Apache 2 License.
