Best Log Management Tools

The benefits of log management and monitoring systems include:

● Unified storage

Not only does having all logs in one place make analysis much easier, but unified storage also enhances your system security. The time between when a threat occurs and when you notice it and take action is crucial, and when you store all log information together, it speeds up this process. When your logging is centralized this also means it is standardized, which makes it easier to search for information across logs from various sources.

● Better security

Log management tools offer customizable real-time alerts, which means that in case of a security breach you can react immediately and prevent further damage from the attacker. You can adjust your monitoring settings to track a custom selection of events, which is also useful for security.

● Improved troubleshooting

One of the most common uses of event logs is for network troubleshooting.
A log management tool allows you to customize your search and analysis of large amounts of data, allowing you to more easily discover connections between events and pinpoint the source of whatever issue you are having.

● Log file parsing

Parsing is the division of data into smaller pieces of information, making it easier to store and manipulate. Similar data structures need to be recognized and then information grouped according to those structures. For example, tracking the activity of a particular user or identifying all timestamps and then gathering logs from a certain timeframe.

● Data analytics

The data your company stores contains all kinds of valuable information. Data analytics cleanses and transforms data with goals such as predicting behavior, helping to make business decisions, and providing new information. For instance, analyzing customer logs could predict that customers are more likely to make a purchase on a particular day of the week, help you decide to target your next marketing campaign toward a different type of audience, or provide you with useful new information about your customers.

For DevOps (the combination of software development and IT operations into a single team), automation is essential in shortening the systems development lifecycle while continuously delivering high-quality software.

Log management is useful when things are running normally, as mentioned above, to provide you with information and help you make business decisions. But logs are also your first indication when a problem is occurring. There are all kinds of issues that need to be caught, and not all of them necessarily show up in the user interface. There are bugs that waste resources, open security holes, and degrade performance, often without being obvious. Other problems can affect the user but it might be hard to trace them to their cause without the right information.

Log management is especially important for cloud-native applications because they are so dynamic and the data is so distributed. Each set of logs also generates database logs, infrastructure logs, subcomponent logs, etc., creating a multitude of potential sources for whatever issue happens to arise. There is so much raw data available that it’s virtually impossible for a human being to sort through the information and figure out what is and isn’t valuable. Statistical analysis involves a great deal of number-crunching as well as comparison with previous log data. Sophisticated software assistance is necessary in order to get insights out of that much data. Log management provides a holistic, realistic view that enables visibility, allowing you to identify trends across your company’s entire infrastructure, so that you can adapt early and prevent problems rather than waiting to solve them after they crop up.