DevOps Intermediate

What is Log Aggregation?

The process of collecting, centralizing, and indexing log data from multiple sources for unified search and analysis.

In distributed systems, logs are scattered across many servers and services. Log aggregation collects them into a central platform for searching, filtering, alerting, and visualization. This is essential for debugging and monitoring.

The ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) is the most popular open-source solution. Alternatives include Grafana Loki, Splunk, and Datadog Logs. Structured logging (JSON format) makes logs easier to query and analyze.

Related Terms

A technique that allows enabling or disabling features in production without deploying new code, enabling safe rollouts and A/B testing.

The acceptable amount of unreliability allowed for a service, calculated as 100% minus the Service Level Objective.

An agentless automation tool for configuration management, application deployment, and task automation using YAML playbooks.

Kubernetes ConfigMap

A Kubernetes object that stores non-sensitive configuration data as key-value pairs, injected into pods as environment variables or files.

Containerization

A lightweight virtualization method that packages applications with their dependencies into isolated, portable containers.

The practice of collecting, analyzing, and alerting on system metrics and logs to ensure application health and performance.

View All DevOps Terms →