Installing PCF Log Search

This document describes how to install and configure Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) Log Search.

Install from Ops Manager

To install PCF Log Search, follow the standard procedure below for installing Ops Manager tiles:

  1. Download the product file from the Log Search section of Pivotal Network.

  2. Upload the product file to your Ops Manager installation.

  3. Click Add next to the uploaded product description in the Available Products view to add this product to your staging area.

  4. Configure Assign AZs and Networks.

    Note: Do not balance jobs between multiple AZs if your environment has relatively high network latency between AZs ( > 5ms ). You must have consistent low latency between AZs to balance jobs between them or you risk partial data loss. Contact your IAAS provider if you are unsure about the network latency between your AZs.

  5. Configure Settings:

    1. Specify the log retention period in number of days. The default is 7, the minimum is 1, and the maximum is 15.
    2. Specify the NATS Credentials for the BOSH Director, which you can find under the Credentials tab on the BOSH Director tile.
    3. Review the max queue length field. By default, the queue node has 2 GB of RAM, and the max queue length is set to 1000000. As a general rule, increase this value by 1,000,000 for every 2 GB of RAM in the queue node. You can view the queue node RAM in the Resource Config section under the VM Type column for the Queue job.

  6. Click Apply Changes.

Configure Pivotal Application Service and Data Service Logs

You can configure Pivotal Application Service (PAS) and other PCF Data Service tiles to send their component logs to the Log Search router through syslog over TCP.

Note: PCF Log Search does not support syslog over UDP.

  1. In the Log Search tile, click Status and record the IP address of the Router VM.

  2. In the Pivotal Application Service tile, click System Logging. Complete the following fields:

    1. External Syslog Aggregator Hostname: Enter the IP address from step 1.
    2. External Syslog Aggregator Port: Enter 514.
    3. External Syslog Network Protocol: Choose TCP.

  3. In the RabbitMQ for PCF tile, update the syslog forwarder settings with the IP address from step 1, protocol TCP, and port 514.

  4. For any other tiles you want to analyze with Log Search, such as MySQL, Redis, and Spring Cloud Services, update the syslog forwarder settings using the IP address from step 1, port 514, and protocol TCP.

  5. Click Apply Changes.

Consume App Logs from the PAS Firehose

By default, Log Search attaches to the PAS Firehose and consumes platform metrics, specifically the ValueMetric, CounterEvent and Error types. You can also configure Log Search to consume app logs and metrics, specifically the ContainerMetric, LogMessage, and HttpStartStop types.

Find the Rate of Incoming Messages

You can discover the rate of messages coming from the PAS Firehose by using the nozzle plugin for the cf CLI.

Run the following command to get a rough estimate of the volume of LogMessages coming from the Firehose. The command outputs the amount of LogMessages per second every 10 seconds.

$ cf nozzle -filter LogMessage | pv -l -i10 -r >/dev/null
[50.5 /s]

Configure Log Search to Receive App Logs

WARNING: Some applications send a large amount of application logs over the Firehose, so you will need to scale up your cluster to handle the additional load. See the Scaling topic for more information.

  1. In the Log Search tile in Ops Manager, click Experimental - Firehose and check the additional Firehose event types you want to consume.

  2. Click Apply Changes.