Central Logging

When application clients are distributed over many host computers, accessing their individual log files could be cumbersome. However, application and component clients can forward copies of their advisory and log messages to the FTL server, so you can access those messages through a central facility.

Note: The initial behavior for each client is to disable forwarding logs to the FTL server. You can enable log forwarding for individual clients using the FTL server web API or the GUI's client status table.

Motivation

Traditionally, each process would output its log messages to either the console, a log file on its host computer, or both. Traditionally, the logging behavior of each process would be determined by the process itself. This model is disadvantageous when an administrator must track many processes, and especially when application clients run in cloud containers.

With central logging you can consume logs from the built-in logging destination. Administrators can also control logging behavior dynamically.

Central Logging Features

You can manipulate the logging behavior of clients by using the FTL server GUI or web API.

  • Clients can forward advisory and log messages to the FTL server.

  • The FTL server can publish those messages on a dedicated log destination, which is available to every client.