In the modern digital era, in which the technology evolves rapidly, companies and organizations need to constantly adapt their approach to IT infrastructure management. Technological development brings increasingly larger amounts of data generated by various systems or applications which a proper analysis of is the crucial challenge for an effective IT management. The implementation of the Centralized Repository for Logs on premises becomes an opportunity for modern organizations which want to successfully manage their own infrastructures.
Centralized Repository for Logs on-premises enables to centrally gather, store and manage the logs from different IT infrastructure components. The information related to the functioning of the operating systems, databases, applications, hardware and software firewalls, network devices and other IT environment components are gathered in one strategic point. Such centralization allows for a complex analysis, optimization, monitoring and securing of the infrastructure. It is particularly important in the context of the increasing complexity of IT environments of companies and the aforementioned growing amount of generated data – including logs.
Log management becomes a more demanding and involved task and also manual administration of the scattered data is slowly becoming impossible – and is surely not profitable anymore. In such circumstances centralization of logs on premises is a strategically sound approach allowing for an effective reaction to the challenges of gathering, complex analysis and interpretation of logs. Thanks to that every incident, diagnostic information or warning is gathered in one, easily accessible place.
Centralized Repository for Logs on-premises – main functions
Centralized Repository for Logs allows to effectively manage logs on many levels. First of all, it gathers logs from different sources – from each component of the infrastructure. What’s important, it happens on automatic abscess, which eliminates the necessity of manual, time-consuming process of log gathering from the scattered sources, which increases the likelihood of errors. Secondly, CRLO allows for a standardization and normalization of logs. It facilitates the analysis and usage of log data in a coherent way. Thanks to that analysts can draw conclusions effectively and identify the behavioral patterns in the whole infrastructure. This in turn facilitates the detection of potential problems and threats and is also of great importance in software risk analysis. Finally, Centralized Repository for Logs provides the ability to store the log data in a secure manner. It is crucial for the logs to be protected from unauthorized access and manipulation, especially in the context of legal and regulatory requirements regarding data confidentiality. One should remember that companies and organizations are obliged to act according to the applicable legislations and regulations. It is their responsibility to adjust the practices and processes, for them to meet the requirements and ensure the security of data and the privacy of potential users. Centralized Repository for Logs facilitates that.
Advantages of Centralized Repository of Logs – value in itself
Centralized Repository of Logs is a fundamental utility in the complex IT environments, in which the amount of generated data increases exponentially. In the wake of this challenge the effective gathering, analysis and management of logs is a priority as it ensures the provision of efficient performance and accessibility of IT systems, but above all – the infrastructure’s security.
Data consolidation
One of the advantages of CRLO is the ability to aggregate the log data from various sources and their consolidation and storing in one place. In the traditional environments logs are scattered on many servers, applications and network devices, which makes the analysis of this data ineffective and requires a considerable commitment of human resources which obviously increases the cost. Log centralization allows a systemization of the log gathering process, providing easy access and effective analysis.
Effective analysis and monitoring
Thanks to the centralized repository of logs organizations gain the ability to perform an effective analysis of logs on a broad scale. The gathered log data is standardized, which makes it easier for analysts to detect patterns, irregularities or atypical incidents across the IT environment. Aggregating the data in one place allows the usage of utilities which provide log parsing to a particular format, which can be then successfully used in the analytical process. These types of platforms are often able to generate intelligible charts and statistics. The log monitoring allows for an ongoing assessment of the system’s performance, identification of potential failures and quick reaction to threats and thereby we proceed to the next advantage of CRLO.
Quick response to threats
One of the key aspects in ensuring IT security is time. The Central Log Repository allows you to immediately respond to potential threats. Analysis of consolidated logs enables the identification of suspicious activity or attacks on individual components of the IT infrastructure. A quick response to these events minimizes the effects of possible incidents, limiting potential losses, risks and loss of credibility on the market.
Optimal data management
Log data management is a complicated process, especially in organizations that generate very large amounts of data. The Central Log Repository makes this process much easier, enabling effective storage, archiving and management of data. The ability to use advanced search and filtering mechanisms for log data translates into effective resource management, which is crucial for the optimal performance of IT systems.
Compliance with regulations and standards
Companies must meet a number of regulations and standards related to data protection, security and auditing. CRLO makes it easier to meet these requirements by enabling you to monitor and manage logs effectively compliant with applicable regulations. This is extremely important, especially in sectors such as finance, health or public administration, where compliance with these regulations is a priority.
Reducing the costs of competences and administration costs
One of the most important benefits of implementing the Central Log Repository on your own servers is the reduction of competence and administration costs. Traditional log management methods require the employment of many specialists with high competences in various logging systems. Each system that generates logs, as well as tools for their analysis and monitoring, requires dedicated knowledge and experience. It is necessary to train staff to use various platforms, which carries time and financial costs.
Implementing a centralized log repository eliminates this complicated structure, replacing it with one integrated system enabling a holistic view of the entire infrastructure and effective log management. This allows the organization to focus its efforts on understanding how and using just one tool. This means reducing the need to employ many specialists, which translates into significant savings in the organization.
The above also clearly shows the reduction of administration costs. Instead of monitoring and maintaining multiple separate login systems, administrators focus on one centralized tool. This is a significant simplification of the management process. Reducing time and resources spent on everyday, often boring administrative operations translates into organizational efficiency. As a result, the company saves resources and management can focus on strategic aspects of the business.
In the context of costs, it is also worth emphasizing that a central log repository allows for better control over data. Thanks to the centralized structure, the organization gains full observability.observability). This is important from a regulatory compliance perspective because, as we mentioned above, organizations must meet certain data storage and protection requirements. The unique challenges of different locations and formats of log data that occur in distributed logging systems are eliminated. As a result, risk is reduced and possible financial penalties related to potential violations of data protection rules are minimized.
Possibility to link events between systems and infrastructure components
A centralized log repository allows organizations to analyze more information, allowing for understanding the full story and context of the event. For example, in the event of an attack on a network, it is possible to identify all related events, making it easier to respond quickly and minimize the damage.
Linking events between systems and infrastructure components is therefore an important benefit of implementing CRLO. In the traditional approach, where logs are scattered across various systems and devices, it is difficult to obtain comprehensive observability over the functioning of the entire IT infrastructure. Each component generates logs in its own context, which makes analyzing events and detecting dependencies between them complicated.
A centralized repository of logs allows you to look at the entire infrastructure in a consistent and complete way. Integrated log data allows you to analyze and identify relationships between different events in different systems. Thanks to this, if problems, anomalies or threats occur in one component, their impact on other infrastructure elements can be quickly identified.
In addition to quick and more effective response to incidents, event linking also ensures better efficiency and effectiveness of the IT infrastructure. Analyzing the links between logs from different systems can reveal patterns that indicate potential areas for optimization or the need for scaling. As a result, we can optimize those components of the environment that we would not potentially expect to optimize.
In the context of regulatory compliance, linking events is equally important. Many legal regulations and industry standards require monitoring and reporting of specific events. A centralized log repository makes it easier to meet these requirements by enabling reporting of comprehensive information related to given events from various parts of the infrastructure.
Local Centralized Repository of Logs – the first step towards observability
Observability is a model of working with data that allows to understand what is happening at every level of the complex digital ecosystem in a given organization (in the hardware and system infrastructure, network layer, IT services, applications, ERP systems, accounting systems, customer service or business processes). The concept of observability is based on the collection and analysis of data from various infrastructure components in order to obtain information about the state and functioning of the entire IT environment. It can be rightly noted that observability has a lot in common with monitoring. However, there are some differences between the two terms regarding the mechanisms used. Monitoring focuses primarily on collecting data on the condition of individual systems in order to quickly respond to violations of boundary conditions. Observability, on the other hand, not only collects data from multiple systems and infrastructure, but also correlates them and allows drill down into related data to learn why something happened in one component of the IT environment and what other elements had an influence on it. This enables an immediate root cause analysis and appropriate actions to be taken.
Observability – benefits
Observability provides many benefits – from the ability to identify the real causes of failure or performance degradation, through identifying potential areas of optimization, to facilitating the linking of event data. What follows, it helps to notice the trends and patterns in the operation of individual components. As a result, observability enables you to respond to and prevent future problems faster and more effectively.
Full observability in the company consists of: logs, metrics and traces – the so-called 3 pillars of observability. Each of them gives you the ability to see the condition of the infrastructure from a different perspective. By analyzing all of the three pillars, it is possible to visualize the condition of the entire environment on all its layers.
The first step towards ensuring observability in the organization is log analysis, i.e. implementing a local centralized repository of logs. It enables a full insight into your own infrastructure and making accurate decisions based on real operational data. CRLO is the foundation for further activities related to monitoring, analysis, security and understanding of IT infrastructure. This is a place where all information about events, errors, user activities and other aspects of the functioning of individual components of the environment are aggregated and stored. The organization therefore has a coherent and ordered database, a repository of sorts, on the basis of which it can build the entire monitoring and analysis process.
An important component of building observability is the standardization and normalization of log data. As we already know, different systems, applications and devices generate logs in different formats and structures. CRLO allows reducing this data to a uniform format, which facilitates their analysis and interpretation. As a result, even complex relationships between various system components become understandable. Analysts and monitoring systems are able to work with data more effectively, which leads to faster detection of potential problems and suspicious activity.
We comprehensively support our clients in the area of observability and monitoring through advice on strategy creation, consulting, employee competence development, audits, modernization and utility development. We also help in implementing a central repository of logs and telemetry data and information flow in the enterprise.
Observability w DevOps
DevOps is the most popular software development methodology. Many companies and organizations have recently adopted it. However, it should be remembered that its implementation is not everything. Several elements influence the effectiveness of DevOps. One of the key ones is observability.
The basic idea of the DevOps methodology is the express and, above all, safe creation and delivery of high-quality software. Lack of awareness and understanding of the failure in the system is an obstacle to its effective removal. This in turn leads to delays in software delivery and implementation. For the DevOps methodology to work effectively, development teams must be provided with full observability of the environment. It is guaranteed by the discussed observability, which provides control over events in the real time.
Modern IT systems are extremely complex. Therefore, it is becoming more and more difficult to detect, understand, repair and prevent possible errors or failures. In recent years, many systems have been transformed into cloud-based microservices. DevOps teams develop and implement them at a rapid pace, which, although innovative and very convenient, can generate numerous, often incomprehensible errors.
Observability w DevOps allows you to catch difficult-to-detect errors, reducing the time needed to eliminate them. Solving problems quickly is crucial. Even a single unresolved error can generate further ones, and leaving them in the system leads to a decrease in the effectiveness of the DevOps methodology in the organization.
Overview of logging aggregation solutions
To benefit from full observability, appropriate utilities are needed. In response to the growing needs, software was created that enables better understanding, analysis and response to events and challenges in IT systems. Each system has its own requirements and needs. By choosing tools for monitoring and observing systems, attention should be paid to, among others: on the intuitiveness and transparency of the user interface, the scope of software functionality, the possibility of its integration with external tools, the possibility of automating selected processes, the complexity of installation and initial configuration, as well as the cost of purchase and use.
Below is a brief description of some of the tools we propose:
- Splunk Observability – a platform that integrates various tools that monitor, analyze and visualize data from systems, applications and IT infrastructure. It enables full observation of the digital environment, identification of problems and optimization of performance.
- Elastic Observability – a set of Elastic tools that allow you to monitor and analyze logs, metrics, transaction traces and other data related to applications and systems. It allows you to quickly find and diagnose problems.
- Datadog Observability – a monitoring platform that integrates data from various sources, such as logs, metrics, traces and events. It allows for comprehensive observation of applications, microservices, containers and the cloud, enabling performance analysis and optimization.
- AppDynamics Observability – a tool enabling monitoring of applications, infrastructure and users. It allows for quick detection, diagnosis and response to problems.
- KubeSphere Observability – a platform designed to monitor and manage complex Kubernetes-based environments. It enables observation of the Kubernetes cluster, applications in containers and microservices, influencing the optimization of system operation.
You can learn more about the above tools in our article „Observability – an overview of the most popular tools”.
Case Study
We have extensive experience in implementing observability and IT monitoring for clients operating in various industries. We help enterprises gain analytical insight into the functioning of their complex IT environments, which include, among others: hardware and software infrastructure, applications, IT services and business processes. Organizations gain full awareness of the operation of their systems, the possibility of potential failures, and the knowledge of how to prevent problems before they negatively impact the environment.
Construction of the Central Log Repository for a key government administration office
Our task was to prepare a uniform, consolidated environment in which the client wanted to collect, process and analyze information about all events coming from individual resources of the critical IT system. For this purpose, we have created a Central Log Repository using ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana), Prometheus and Grafana technologies. We installed and configured the solution and integrated it with log generating systems. We enabled data visualization and analysis, archiving, monitoring and reporting of the operation of system resources. As a result, we have simplified and automated the system data monitoring processes and reduced the time needed to diagnose problems. By obtaining a complete picture of how resources are operating, we have improved infrastructure management and monitoring processes. Read more about this implementation: Construction of RCLO for government administration.
Support in the construction of the Central Log Repository in the on-premise model for one of the largest Polish banks
The main goal for this client was also to create a Central Repository of Logs. The work was to ensure business continuity, performance and capacity of one of the critical systems, as well as the integrity and coherence of configuration files. Everything had to take into account access control measures and guarantee the security of stored and processed information. In this situation, we also chose ELK, Prometheus and Grafana technology. By providing a uniform and secured place to store logs, we have increased security and access control to customer log data. Automation of log processing and analysis processes has significantly saved time and resources. We also made it possible to quickly detect potential problems. Find out more about this implementation: Support in building CRLO in the bank.
Summary – is it worth using the potential of the Central Log Repository?
In the face of the dynamic development of technology, one of the important elements enabling effective management of IT infrastructure is the Central Repository of Logs on premise (CRLO). Thanks to the consolidation of information, the possibility of effective log analysis and quick response to threats, convenient storage, easy archiving and data management in compliance with applicable standards and law, organizations can optimally manage the entire IT environment. This primarily reduces costs (at many stages), improves efficiency and increases the level of safety. CRLO also provides the ability to link events between systems and individual infrastructure components, enabling the identification of relationships between various events. As a result, specialists respond faster and more effectively, always making the best possible decisions.
It is worth considering implementing CRLO in your organization. This step may prove crucial to maintaining or improving efficiency and competitiveness on the market. The scope of activity or the specificity of the industry do not constitute any barriers – the implementation of CRLO can bring significant benefits to any enterprise or organization that uses information technology. It increases the level of security, streamlines operations and effective comprehensive infrastructure management. This is an investment that can pay off many times over.
Additional resources
In order to broaden your knowledge about log centralization and the implementation of the Central Repository of Logs, we encourage you to read the following sources:
- https://www.splunk.com/en_us/blog/learn/centralized-logging.html
- https://www.splunk.com/en_us/blog/learn/log-analytics.html
- https://www.csoonline.com/article/565608/why-you-need-centralized-logging-and-event-log-management.html
- https://www.csoonline.com/article/526796/network-security-what-is-log-management-and-how-to-choose-the-right-tools.html
- https://www.hitechnectar.com/blogs/centralized-log-management-benefits/
