Enterprise Server Log Management

An enterprise server log management system is a software solution that helps you with server log monitoring.

The server log management process can involve:

• Collecting logs from the various devices across your network and systems
• Aggregating and normalizing logs, so they can be read together and compared to each other without needing to understand the different formats taken by each type of server log in their original format
• Centralizing log data using a server log viewer lets you see and sort through your logs using filters and search engines
• Analyzing the log data that comes from your network servers to better understand performance issues and possible preventative measures

The process of enterprise logging, which involves monitoring and managing the logs in enterprise servers, depends on following best practices to suit the scale of your business.

For any enterprise, there are often too many logs being produced for manual monitoring and management to be a viable option. It makes sense to utilize a server log monitoring software solution that aggregates and analyzes logs from across your system to help you make sense of thousands of data points.

Effective enterprise logging (even with the use of a tool) it’s based on checking logs routinely. Far too often, organizations view logs as a reactive means of troubleshooting. While important for that purpose, logs can also be used to proactively spot trends and make improvements before problems arise. In large environments, you should make log management a regular project, taking time each day to look at the enterprise log management solution’s Log Viewer to see if there are any logs indicating potential issues.

Even with regularly checking logs, it’s possible for issues to slip through the cracks, which is why an important part of log monitoring and management is ensuring the necessary devices and applications are in fact being monitored — and checking you have effective alerting systems in place. For effective enterprise-scale logging, it’s important to set up alerts to catch anomalies and can send an automatic notification to IT. Set alerts for logs tied to compliance as well as those tied to security and system performance.

A universal solution to this tedious process is to implement an effective system for collecting and managing logs from the computer system. Proper software should be designed to collect data, normalize it, enable visualization, real-time viewing as well as alerting about anomalies.

There are many reasons to improve your enterprise logging management by investing in a server log analysis tool. Some of the most important benefits include:

• More informed troubleshooting: Not managing your logs can hinder network visibility and troubleshooting capacity, leading to a slower network.
• Quicker root cause identification: Without effective enterprise logging and a dedicated server log analysis tool, you may not be able to adequately identify root cause, resulting in a longer mean-time-to-resolution.
• Gain deeper visibility with unified log management: Navigating multiple tools for enterprise log management and performance data can result in lost insights.
• To maintain a higher level of network and server performance, an enterprise server log management system can help you perform more effective enterprise logging.

From small to large infrastructures, SolarWinds Log Analyzer is designed to handle enterprise server log management and help you maintain performance and avoid issues that impact end users.

Log Analyzer is built to be a powerful and intuitive log management tool that can be integrated with the SolarWinds Orion Platform, meaning Log Analyzer can be integrated with other SolarWinds products to bring you a unified view of your complete IT infrastructure. Through the Orion Platform, you can easily see the associated logs alongside other performance metrics on a single centralized dashboard.

With Log Analyzer, you can more easily identify the root cause of server and network issues with the help of built-in log analysis and management features in addition to the tool’s Log Viewer. Not only can Log Analyzer collect and normalize your server logs, so you can more easily understand them and put them in context with each other, the tool also offers advanced filters and a powerful search engine to help you find the exact log or logs associated with a specific problem to make it easier to find the root cause of performance problems as they arise, which translates into faster troubleshooting and problem-solving.

Log Analyzer also comes with a wide variety of features designed to aid in enterprise server log management, including:

• Event and log collection from a variety of sources and log analysis
• Powerful search and filter capabilities
• Support for tagging logs
• Real-time log streaming capabilities
• Ingestion of flat log files