Insider 2020-06: edge; log management layer; WSL;

Dear syslog-ng users,

This is the 82nd issue of syslog-ng Insider, a monthly newsletter that brings you syslog-ng-related news.

NEWS

Syslog-ng on the edge

After many years of pushing all computing from on-site to the cloud or huge data centers, there is a new trend: edge computing. There can be many reasons, legal or practical, why data should be processed locally instead of being sent to a central location as soon as it is created. Edge computing was a central theme of the recently held Red Hat Summit. Luckily syslog-ng is well prepared for this use case right from the beginning. While most people only know that syslog-ng can act as a client or a server, it can also collect, process and forward log messages. In syslog-ng terminology it is called a relay, but on the edge you might want to combine server and a relay functionality into one.

https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/syslog-ng-on-the-edge

Creating a dedicated log management layer

Event logging is a central source of information both for IT security and operations, but different teams use different tools to collect and analyze log messages. The same log message is often collected by multiple applications. Having each team using different tools is complex, inefficient and makes systems less secure. Using a single application to create a dedicated log management layer independent of analytics instead, however, has multiple benefits.

Using syslog-ng is a lot more flexible than most log aggregation tools provided by log analytics vendors. This is one of the reasons why my talks and blogs focused on how to make your life easier using its technical advantages. Of course, I am aware of the direct financial benefits as well. If you are interested in that part, talk to my colleagues on the business side. They can help you to calculate how much you can save on your SIEM licenses when syslog-ng collects log messages and ensures that only relevant messages reach your SIEM and only at a predicatively low message rate. You can learn more about this use case on our Optimizing SIEM page.

In this blog, I will focus on a third aspect: simplifying complexity. This was the focus of many of my conference discussions before the COVID-19 pandemic. If we think a bit more about it, we can see that this is not really a third aspect, but a combination of the previous two instead. Using the flexibility of syslog-ng, we create a dedicated log management layer in front of different log analytics solutions. By reducing complexity, we can save in many ways: on computing and human resources, and on licensing when using commercial tools for log analysis as well.

https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/creating-a-dedicated-log-management-layer

I will cover this topic more in depth in my upcoming talk at the Pass the SALT conference: https://pass-the-salt.org/

Using syslog-ng in WSL

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is an optional feature of Windows 10 for developers who want the power of Linux (especially the Linux shell) on their Windows desktops. Of course, it is more than just a shell: you can easily install and run any command line applications (but not GUI). As a Linux desktop user, I do not need WSL to access a Linux shell, but as I am often asked how syslog-ng runs in WSL, I finally gave it a try.

The recurring questions are if syslog-ng runs at all in WSL and what the performance compared to syslog-ng installed on Linux is. As I run openSUSE Leap 15.1 as my main operating system on my laptop, I used that in WSL as well. I tested not just WSL 1, which has been generally available for years, but also the upcoming WSL 2, which brings tons of performance improvements. As WSL 2 involves virtualization, I also tested syslog-ng in Vmware Workstation running on Windows. In all cases, I used the latest syslog-ng 3.26 from my unofficial syslog-ng repository for openSUSE and a minimally modified syslog-ng.conf to enable the network source. Benchmarking was done both from localhost and from a small Xeon server on the local network, attached through Gigabit Ethernet.

https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/using-syslog-ng-in-wsl

CONFERENCES

• ”Creating a dedicated log management layer” talk at the virtual Pass the SALT conference: https://pass-the-salt.org/

WEBINARS

• Learn how to do custom HTTP REST API Authentication with syslog-ng: https://www.syslog-ng.com/event/customize-http-rest-apis-authentication-with-syslog-ng8143495/

• You can browse recordings of past webinars at https://www.syslog-ng.com/events/

Your feedback and news, or tips about the next issue are welcome. To read this newsletter online, visit: https://syslog-ng.com/blog/