I've run into serious trouble with logging in a high-traffic production environment where latency spiked unexpectedly. It turned out that a simple console.log for 'temporary debugging' was to blame—it was dumping a gigantic object with nested data from a database call on every request. This was seriously affecting CPU usage during peak times. We also found other heavy logs that were left behind, like full HTML payloads being logged in email preview routes. To prevent future issues, we're planning to implement a lint rule to catch logs that are over a certain size and flag raw object dumps. Has anyone else dealt with logging statements causing significant performance problems? What strategies do you use to prevent debug logs from sneaking into production?
5 Answers
I remember enabling logging on created/deleted/modified records in Microsoft Navision. It was a mistake that made everything painful because creating a sales order generated hundreds of log entries right from the get-go—way more than I anticipated.
Logging disasters are all too common! I once ran an auto discovery tool from a network monitoring tool, and it crashed some of our older switches. Talk about frustrating in a production environment!
Oh man, I've seen logging wreak havoc on production in many ways. One memorable incident was when we added logging to a system at a Fortune 500 IoT company for smart locks. The hotfix led to us being unable to manage new lock codes. Logging can really throw a wrench in things!
Oh absolutely, I've had some nightmares with logging. I once crashed a Cisco switch just by running packet capture. It really shouldn’t have gone down, but it did—such a hassle in a live environment. It's funny how something that should be routine can turn disastrous!
Don't get me started on Exchange Server! It can really cause chaos with logging if you’re not careful. Just enabling the logging for certain actions can create an avalanche of log entries and bog down the system.
Yeah, I experienced something similar with an integrated packet capture on a catalyst 9k switch. It stopped forwarding traffic completely, and I lost management access. Not ideal in a manufacturing setup where you need someone to physically go in to restart it. And I learned the hard way that the "debug all" command on Cisco devices can cause them to stop forwarding traffic too.