With thousands of logs generated every minute from your infrastructure, applications, services, and devices, retaining this copious amount of data for active search and analysis can be cost-prohibitive. Because log volumes continue to grow rapidly as operations scale, it’s common for organizations to implement log management strategies and store only a limited number to minimize costs. Deciding which logs need to be stored and analyzed can be highly complex, and retaining only a subset of logs can make it challenging to troubleshoot effectively.
Stream-based monitoring solutions are gaining popularity because they can support real-time troubleshooting and eliminate the need to store data that only needs to be leveraged transiently. Today, Datadog offers log stream-based products and features such as Sensitive Data Scanner, Cloud SIEM, and Error Tracking. Now, we’re pleased to announce our new stream-based Live Search feature for Datadog Log Management, available in private beta. Live Search provides you with the ability to search across all ingested logs for the past 15 minutes, giving you access to the data that you need for real-time investigations. Live Search gives you full visibility into all of your logs post-processing—completely unsampled—regardless of how you’ve configured your indexes, quotas, or exclusion filters. In this post, we’ll show you how to use Live Search to:
- Correlate directly between live traces and logs
- Verify new deployments and streamline CI/CD deployments
Correlate directly between live traces and logs
Live Search for Log Management conveniently correlates with APM Live Search so you can view, search, and analyze all logs within the last 15 minutes that are associated with a specific trace. This correlation really comes into play during reactionary troubleshooting.
As an example, let’s say you’re an engineer and discover that an application is not processing requests. You begin to review live APM traces to try and determine the root cause of the issue, but when you select a trace, all you are able to see is that there is some form of server error. Instead of shooting in the dark through trial and error, you can directly pivot to the Live Search page to investigate all logs associated with the trace from the past 15 minutes.
By analyzing the logs, you pinpoint that the root cause is a batch API failure and see the code that was run on the most recent API call attempts. You can continue your investigation by pivoting between 15 minutes of live traces and live logs as needed until the issue is resolved. And if you begin your investigation by viewing logs, you can also directly access any related APM traces for a broader view into your stack.
Verify new deployments and streamline CI/CD troubleshooting
Live Search can help you troubleshoot issues in your CI/CD pipeline in order to maximize development time. You can verify whether a new deployment has been successful by searching for keywords such as “deployment” and “failure” to get a bird’s-eye view of any issues that may have occurred. You can also quickly determine if hot fixes have successfully resolved an issue by viewing all logs that are ingested after you execute a change.
Reviewing your logs in real time can become extremely valuable during peak traffic times for your application or website, as well as for live streaming major events, such as sports games and television premieres. A real-time stream of logs lets you better understand what platforms or devices your viewers use to tune in, where they are viewing from, and how many are logged in at any given time. This information can help you engage with your audience effectively and troubleshoot time-sensitive incidents during broadcast to minimize negative impact on viewership.
Logs on the stream
Live Search for Datadog Log Management is designed to handle data at petabyte scale, and it enables you to view and query all ingested logs for troubleshooting and analysis without any pressure to retain them. With a real-time stream of logs, you have full visibility into the data that matters to you.
To learn more about Datadog Log Management, see our documentation. Don’t have a Datadog account yet? Sign up for a free trial.
