When you ask developers what tools they use to troubleshoot issues with distributed applications, logging is one of the top things considered. By their very essence, distributed applications and microservices have many instances deployed. In order to make sense of the data for analysis and debugging, you need an enterprise logging framework that will collect all the data from all instances and present them in a unified view. Apprenda provides such a centralized logging framework as a major component of our Apprenda Cloud Platform product. Logs are accessible by both developers and operators, with the former getting a scoped view of only the logs belonging to their applications.

Some notable features of our logging framework include:

• Ability to search logs
• Ability to filter logs by a date interval or scope them to a specific application
• Ability to scrub and mask sensitive information from log messages (things like passwords and tokens)
• Ability to create rules for email notifications
• Ability to integrate with common logging frameworks like log4net and log4j, allowing developers to log message in their framework of choice
• Ability to create overrides that guide the behavior of the logging subsystem

In addition to allowing developers to log messages in the framework of their choice, Apprenda also enriches log messages with key contextual information. This is information that the Platform knows about the current process executing a request, or the user account that initiated the action. An example log message coming out of Apprenda will include fields like the following:

However, logs are not used only for debugging purposes anymore. Many developers use logging as a means to capture critical information about the application, performance metrics, usage patterns, and key customer metrics among others. The volume of data captured has increased significantly the last few years, making it all the more important to have systems that can make sense of such a volume of data.  

With Apprenda v6.6, we are excited to announce the ability to forward all logs from the Apprenda Cloud Platform to any logging framework, including Splunk. This means that all logs coming from guest applications and the Apprenda Cloud Platform core services can be forwarded to a local or cloud-based Splunk instance, letting Splunk do what it does best. Splunk, the leading platform for Operational Intelligence, allows customers to find valuable insights out of data, making your applications more secure, stable, better performant, and more profitable. 

Using Splunk and Apprenda together, operators and developers can:

• Analyze logs for debugging purposes to identify issues with the infrastructure or applications
• Get notified via alerts when critical issues occur
• Analyze the data to find trends, patterns and inefficiencies
• Keep a complete record of all logs and transactions in a system that can be queried in milliseconds
• Look for security threats and fraudulent behavior
• Create Dashboards and Reports based on application Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Apprenda and Splunk work together to provide developers and operators a platform to collect, analyze, correlate, and search all the critical data coming out of applications running on Apprenda. Sifting through billions of log records and identifying insights to make your business more productive is now just a few searches away, making it easier for you to concentrate on innovation and make choices based on real data. 

To learn more about our integration with Splunk, visit our integration page on GitHub at https://github.com/apprenda/Splunk and view the video, below.