Logging

Logging is a standard tool for system operators to gain observability into their applications. kdb Insights Enterprise uses standard industry practices for logging. Log messages are generated in a structured format and emitted to STDOUT where they are consumed by standard logging stacks. Kubernetes collects the log messages into files, where log agents consume them and send them to a downstream log aggregator.

Kubernetes logging.

To configure the log level of your application at installation time, use the details provided on the Configure logging page.

Logging Stack

kdb Insights Enterprise does not ship with a logging stack, you can choose one based on your use-case and preference. The three main cloud providers (GCP, AWS, and ACS) have managed Kubernetes services which provide the ability to automatically integrate with their logging stacks.

Alternatively, you can use a third-party agent such as fluent-bit.

You can configure fluent-bit to forward to any of its supported downstream targets.

Install

Supported targets

KX terraform deploys

If installing your environment with the KX Terraform scripts, the kdb Insights Enterprise Terraform modules are configured by default to deploy and utilize fluent-bit for each of the cloud providers.

Sending logs to other log aggregation systems

The fluent-bit configuration is stored on the following files and can be updated as required:

terraform/k8s_config_aws/logging.tf
terraform/k8s_config_azure/logging.tf
terraform/k8s_config_gcp/logging.tf

Audit logging

You can use audit logging in kdb Insights and kdb Insights Enterprise to identify user changes and state changing actions that may affect the running of the system.

Audit logging is available at both a global and per-component level. Enable audit logging globally by adding the following setting in your global values file:

global:
  auditLog:
      enabled: "true"

You can also enable auditing for an individual component. For example:

client-controller:
  auditLog:
    enabled: "true"

Audit log message format

All audit log messages have the "component": "Audit" tag to separate them from standard log messages.

They also contain the "level" and "message" tags common to all log messages, which identify severity and the action to be logged respectively.

The following is an indicative example of an audit log message:

{"time":"<time>","component":"Audit","level":"INFO","message":"<message>","corr":"<correlation-id>"}

Correlation ID

All audit logs have a correlation ID which persists throughout the lifetime of the event.

Each audit log message can propagate through to multiple different components in kdb Insights or kdb Insights Enterprise.

A single audit event can create multiple log messages. Messages relating to the same event all share the same correlation ID.

The correlation ID appears in the log as "corr" and can be used to precisely identify which event a log message refers to.