I'm curious about the services and tools you use to inspect production logs, especially since our backend runs in Docker and we're currently using Portainer. Unfortunately, the container console is really slow and frustrating for anything that requires detailed checks. We're also utilizing Sentry for error tracking, but it doesn't help with general log exploration or debugging tasks. While we've thought about using Grafana, it doesn't seem very user-friendly for log inspection. Are there any dedicated log management tools you recommend that allow for nice filtering by log level, efficient searching across large time ranges, and overall good performance? If needed, I'm even considering building a simple log viewer myself, possibly using spdlog to write to rotating text files and creating a UI on top. Has anyone taken that approach?
3 Answers
If you're on AWS, CloudWatch Insights is a game-changer for log analysis. It simplifies things a lot. For something similar outside AWS, consider the ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana). Also, Grafana has Loki, which might be more user-friendly than standard Grafana for logs. Moving toward structured logging can also really help streamline your log analysis process. Check out this great blog on the topic!
I totally get your struggle with slow consoles. For logs, if you want something robust, try using Splunk. It’s not my favorite, but it gets the job done. Also, have you looked at NewRelic? It's more focused on performance but can log back to create useful data points. Other options like ElasticSearch and Kibana are designed for log data if you want a full-fledged logging framework. Just do a little research on what features you need the most!
Tail -f filename.log is a simple yet effective command if your backend runs just one process! It's straightforward and helps you see the logs in real-time. Just be aware that it becomes cumbersome with multiple processes. But for general inspection, it’s quick and easy!
That's true, but does it handle multiple processes gracefully? I've found it can get messy quickly.