Adventures in GELF
If you are running apps in containers and are using Docker’s GELF logging driver (or are considering using it), the following musings might be relevant to your interests.
Some context
When you run applications in containers, the easiest logging method is to write on standard output. You can’t get simpler than that: just echo, print, write (or the equivalent in your programming language!) and the container engine will capture your application’s output.
Other approaches are still possible, of course; for instance:
- you can use syslog, by running a syslog daemon in your container or exposing a /dev/log socket;
- you can write to regular files and share these log files with your host, or with other containers, by placing them on a volume;
- your code can directly talk to the API of a logging service.
In the last scenario, this service can be:
- a proprietary logging mechanism operated by your cloud provider, e.g. AWS CloudWatch or Google Stackdriver;
- provided by a third-party specialized in managing logs or events, e.g. Honeycomb, Loggly, Splunk, etc.;
- something running in-house, that you deploy and maintain yourself.
If your application is very terse, or Continue reading
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