Introduction
The great tension in log records is optimizing for both human and machine readability which is why some have turned to JSON logs. In this blog, we discuss our recent announcement of support for JSON and Kafka, and the many use cases supported by LogAI.
JSON Log Optimizing for Human and Machine Readability
In a recent blog, Structure in Unstructured Logs, we discussed one of the approaches we take to discovering structure through our industry-first real-time Natural Language Processing (NLP).
Our customers have been busy working on this problem as well. JSON is a format that is common across many IT use cases today. A growing use case is log data, whether in the cloud or on premise. As Jaouher Kharrat explains, JSON is considered by some to do a good job of balancing human and machine readability.
“The advantages of JSON over other data exchange formats, such as XML, becomes very clear as it’s simple for us humans to both read, write, and understand. How? Its structure is a simple syntax of key-value pairs ordered and nested within arrays.”
Jaouher Kharrat,
Creating a Human and Machine freindly logging format, September 17, 2022.
JSON Log Use Cases
Augtera’s LogAI is a totally different log solution experience than what exists on the market today. As such, it is complimentary to many log tools. If a customer wants to collect log data with Splunk, Elastic Search, or any other collector, then send the log data to LogAI to find networking needles in the log haystack, and then have those needles sent to other tools, then LogAI will support that.
Data can be ingested in Augtera through JSON over UDP, JSON over Kafka, and Syslog. Data can be enriched with meta-information and extracted data. Enriched data, Augtera generated anomalies, and / or AI insights can be published to Kafka, Slack, ServiceNow, Syslog or other consumers.
JSON is widely used in cloud software architectures, it is DevOps/NetDevOps friendly, complementing Augtera Networks APIs, and provides a balance between human-readability and structure/machine-readability.
Conclusion
On September 20th, 2022, Augtera Networks announced LogAI support for JSON and Kafka, both of which are increasing in use by Network Operations teams, and IT in general. This support adds to LogAI’s flexible ingestion, structured query, regex, and flexible notification/publication capabilities. Potential use cases are many, contact us to have an engineer explore your specific requirements.
