VMware Tanzu Modern Apps
  • Modern Application Solutions
  • The Why and What of Kubernetes
    • Introduction to Containers
    • Introduction to Kubernetes
    • From Docker Containers to Kubernetes
    • The Power of Kubernetes Services
    • Microservices Architecture
    • What is Cloud Native?
  • Build Kubernetes Runtime
    • Provisioning Kubernetes
      • Kubernetes on vSphere
        • Provisioning Kubernetes Clusters with VMware PKS
        • Provisioning Kubernetes Clusters with VMware Enterprise PKS
        • Provisioning Kubernetes Clusters with the Cluster API
    • Updating Kubernetes Clusters
    • Controlling Ingress with Contour
  • Manage and Monitor
    • Monitoring Kubernetes
    • Monitoring Containers at Scale with Wavefront
    • Monitoring with VMware vRealize Log Insight
    • Managing and Securing Container Images in a Registry
    • Compliance Testing with Sonobuoy
    • Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Resources with Velero
    • Managing Microservices with a Service Mesh
  • Multi-Cloud Multi-Cluster Management
  • Challenges Managing Multiple Cluster across Multiple Clouds
  • Introducing VMware Tanzu Mission Control
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  • Instant Integration
  • Centralized Logging for Kubernetes
  • Taking the Audit Trail to Compliance
  • Container Log Format and Log File
  • Logging Requirements and Options for Cloud Native Applications
  • Conclusion

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  1. Manage and Monitor

Monitoring with VMware vRealize Log Insight

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Last updated 5 years ago

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delivers highly scalable log management with actionable dashboards, analytics, and broad third-party extensibility, giving you deep operational visibility and faster troubleshooting.

Log Insight is particularly useful in multi-cloud and hybrid environments that include cloud-native applications because it provides operational visibility and faster troubleshooting across physical, virtual and cloud environments. Log Insight can process a container's standard output as a data stream.

For a quick overview of how Log Insight integrates with VMware Enterprise PKS, check out the :

Instant Integration

VMware Enterprise PKS integrates with vRealize® Log Insight to provide visibility into the core layers of the container platform, giving you pinpoint traceability and monitoring through intelligent data tagging. VMware Enterprise PKS aggregates and ships all logs to Log Insight with searchable tags, such as cluster, pod, namespace and container. VMware Enterprise PKSf, which encrypts log data in transit with SSL, uses log limiting and throttling to prevent overflow or loss of data to the Log Insight endpoint.

Centralized Logging for Kubernetes

Centralized logging is an essential part of any enterprise Kubernetes deployment. Configuring and maintaining a real-time, high-performance central repository for log collection can ease the day-to-day operations of tracking what went wrong and its impact.

Effective central logging also helps development teams observe application logs to analyze performance.

Taking the Audit Trail to Compliance

Security compliance and auditing often require a company to maintain digital trails of who did what and when. In most cases, a robust logging solution is the most efficient way to satisfy these requirements.

The following diagram illustrates the integration:

Container Log Format and Log File

By default, container engines such as Docker capture the standard output or error and leverage the JSON-file driver on each host to write messages to files. Docker maintains a separate log file for each container and stores it in the /var/log/containers directory of the Docker host. Annotation for each log entry consists of the following:

Log message
Message origin – stdout or stderr
Timestamp

Logging Requirements and Options for Cloud Native Applications

Log aggregation requirements are much more than message rendering. An effective log aggregator must support the processing of events from thousands of endpoints, the ability to accommodate real-time queries, and a superior analytics engine to provide intelligent metrics to solve complex technical and business problems.

You have the option to implement log aggregation using vRealize Log Insight or a number of popular open source or commercial logging analytics solutions, such as the following:

  • Elasticsearch

  • Fluentd

  • Kibana

  • Splunk.

Each solution has a set of strengths and weaknesses. VMware Enterprise PKS gives you the flexibility to let you choose a solution that best aligns with your processes, tooling, and environment.

Conclusion

Centralized logging is a mandatory requirement of an enterprise Kubernetes deployment. The ability to view and filter logs in real time across thousands of endpoints is vital to be able to triage and resolve infrastructure and application issues quickly.

Combining Log Insight with VMware Enterprise PKS is one way to implement logging for Kubernetes deployments. To find out more, take a look at this blog post:

Log Insight can also be set up to work with VMware PKS or the open source version of Kubernetes by using Fluentd; for details, see the blog post titled .

Out of the box, VMware Enterprise PKS creates a powerful logging layer on top of Kubernetes by using a combination of Fluentd and VMware vRealize Log Insight. This describes how this integration works and how you can leverage it to quickly capture aggregated container logs from your Kubernetes pods and view them in the vRealize Log Insight dashboard.

Forwarding Kubernetes Log to vRealize Log Insight via Fluentd
blog post
VMware vRealize Log Insight
following video
The Big Easy: Visualizing Logging Data by Integrating Fluentd and vRealize Log Insight with VMware PKSThe Big Easy: Visualizing Logging Data by Integrating Fluentd and vRealize Log Insight with VMware PKS
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How Log Insight integrates with VMware Enterprise PKS.