Logging Ain’t Easy 😒…But It Could Be 😏

Real talk – logging tools aren’t exactly known for being easy to use, manage, or onboard. With the technology landscape continuously evolving, enterprises are often left scrambling to rapidly adapt and conform to new requirements of operating across hybrid infrastructures. It is in these ecosystems that logs are now more crucial than ever in the day-to-day operations of Ops teams. 

Empowering Ops Teams With Logs

At LogicMonitor, we use our own LM Logs to be both proactive and reactive in our monitoring, so we know that ease of use is essential to our team’s productivity. Logging tools shouldn’t hinder Ops teams, they should empower them. Whether it is to decrease MTTR, quickly find the root cause, or leverage the data to understand user behaviors and trends, our main priority is ease of use for our customers. This enables organizations to focus on scaling and growing their business, without sacrificing productivity. 

Enter LM Logs – an easy-to-use logging tool that allows organizations to centralize their log data, correlate metrics and logs, and layer with anomaly detection to optimize log intelligence for full visibility. With the ability to collect logs from both on-prem AND cloud to tie it all in with metrics, this is the foundational building block for adopting, implementing, and practicing unified observability, and a differentiated offering in the observability market.

Common Logs Roadblocks

With LM Logs, you get logs, and you get logs, everyone gets logs – basically, a logs solution for any and every Ops team. Here are the most common scenarios and roadblocks many organizations face when it comes to log tools:

• Access- If an organization has a logging tool, it’s usually the security teams who own the logging tool –  so ingesting all of your infrastructure logs and balancing the need to monitor ingestion limits and security logs is a challenge, as security use cases are often prioritized. 
• Manual workflows- Many organizations are still accessing logs manually, which complicates things when there is an issue and teams spend hours sifting through log data to find the root cause. 
• Tribal knowledge- Most logging tools require proprietary knowledge of the tool or different querying languages – so it can be hard to onboard your resources and effectively manage the tool when it requires specific skills. 
• Retention duration- With logs, it’s important to have access to the log data you need, exactly when you need it. And that includes going back into logs for past issues, understanding trends, and getting historical context for baselines, forecasting, and forensics. Most solutions cap retention durations at 30-90 days, some offer 1 year. But even then, it’s cold storage, which limits you from getting instant access and pursuing remediation efforts.
• So many logs, not enough time- Then there is log volume. So many logs. When an issue occurs, like when a Kafka broker stops, teams don’t have time to search through millions of logs, not really sure what to even look for since there is no context. 
• Log tools can be expensive- Everyone’s favorite topic: cost. Logging tools are not cheap. It’s hard to justify for different Ops teams, especially if the security team is already leveraging a logging tool. 
• Archaic and appliance heavy tech stacks- I know vintage is “trending” and all, and just because we may be wearing flared jeans again (or even JNCO jeans, yikes) and reliving the glory of the ’90s, a vintage tech stack is neither cool nor useful. But we get it. Moving everything to the cloud is tough. Cloud maturity in an organization really varies by team, company initiatives, system requirements, and introduces complexity and risk. Because of that, many enterprises operate and will continue to operate across hybrid IT infrastructures. And with a complex hybrid infrastructure, visibility is the critical first step before any modernization can happen.   

Solutions to Your Logs Troubles 

• A logs tool for all Ops teams- LogicMonitor delivers unified logs and metrics to give you full visibility into your entire infrastructure ecosystem with context and correlation, while also centralizing your log data. IT teams can get a 360 view into their tech landscape to meet and accelerate their business objectives.
• Fast and easy onboarding- Start ingesting log data in minutes. No more manually going to the box to get what you need to resolve an issue, we promise. 
• Logs for everyone, really- Querying capabilities for ALL experience levels – simple, advanced, and everywhere in-between. For those who want a simpler approach to log analysis, no querying knowledge is required. If you’re itching to take a deep dive and show off your querying skills, you can do that too!
• Instant log data, all the time- LM Logs offers tiered retention. With 30 day, 1 year available today, and spoiler alert, unlimited retention being released later in Q4, your teams can access log data when an issue occurs in real-time. Forensics can quickly evaluate historical errors for internal compliance, external audits, and data hygiene. But it gets better, LM Logs comes with HOT STORAGE – so your teams can access logs at any time, instantly. 
• Finding the needle, without the haystack- Log volume is overwhelming. LM Logs offers unique anomaly detection to help you instantly narrow down millions of events, into just a few hundred max. With contextualized data and direct correlation to metrics, finding the root cause has never been easier.   
• Modernize your tech stack- Sounds easy, right? But you can’t modernize if you don’t know what is where, how it is being used, and the impact on your overall infrastructure and applications. With LM Logs, you get a holistic view of your hybrid infrastructure and can leverage the data and context to understand and see roadblocks, slowdowns, gaps, issues, underutilization, overutilization, and more. You can make better business decisions to optimize Syslog fragmentation, decrease your appliance footprint, and streamline your workflows by making way for new tech, modern apps, and a “cloudier” tech stack.  

Ready to change your logs game? Is your curiosity peaked? 

Check out our monthly Logs for Lunch webinar series to get the scoop on LM Logs use cases, instant value, and solution demo, followed by Q&A with one of our Logs Specialists.