I am pleased to announce our latest long-term supported version of syslog-ng Premium Edition, 6 LTS. In addition to the long-awaited key-value parser, we updated the TLS cipher suite and introduced .NET Framework 4.0 support in the Windows agent. We also renamed the installer packages to provide a more simple and straightforward nomenclature.
Another very important change is being made to our version policy – this will fundamentally change how we release and support syslog-ng PE in the future, so I highly advise you to read about the details below.
Main technical changes:
- The syslog-ng PE application can separate a message consisting of whitespace or comma-separated key=value pairs (for example, Postfix log messages) into name-value pairs. You can also specify other separator character instead of the equal sign, for example, colon (:) to parse MySQL log messages.
- The OpenSSL application used in syslog-ng PE has been updated to version 1.0.2, so you can use new, stronger ciphers to protect the communication between your syslog-ng PE clients and servers.
- The graphical interface of the syslog-ng Agent for Windows 6 LTS application now supports version 4.0 of the Microsoft .NET Framework, and Windows 10 and Windows Server 2012 are now officially supported. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) is also supported now by syslog-ng PE 6 LTS. As usual, vendor-tested installation packages are available for more than 50 server platforms.
- Starting from version 6 LTS, the syslog-ng PE installer packages (earlier called client and server package) are renamed. From now on, the package with the compact suffix does not include SQL support. If you do not use the sql() source or destination on the host, use the compact binaries. That way no unnecessary components are installed to your system. Earlier, the names of packages containing sql() support included the server suffix, this suffix has been removed from the package names.
Version policy changes:
Please be aware that our version policy for syslog-ng Premium Edition will change. From the next release (currently planned to be available in November 2016), we will start releasing syslog-ng according to a rolling model, to achieve a faster release cycle. New features, bug and security fixes will be launched in the same release as they are available for production usage. Each rolling release is supported for 12 months after the original publication date. Bugs are accepted on any of the supported versions, and bug fixes will be implemented on the latest version.
For more information on the syslog-ng PE 6 LTS, check out our What’s New Guide or the latest Administrator Guide.