Posts by Rapid7

2 min IT Ops

Using Logs for Security & Compliance: Part 1

This 3-part series explores the critical role logs play in maintaining regulatory compliances and provides specific examples of known events to look for an how to evaluate different compliance tools. To download the free 24-page white paper, click here [http://info.logentries.com/using-logs-to-address-compliance-standards]. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For organizations that need to remain compliant with specific regulatory standards, requ

2 min IT Ops

Analyzing ELB Log Data

Thanks to some slick work from our engineering team, we have recently released a lightweight python script that will allow you to pull your Elastic Load Balancer logs from S3 into Logentries. In this implementation, we use AWS Lambda and leverage the S3 trigger, so the script only runs when needed. The full documentation is available here: https://logentries.com/doc/s3-ingestion-with-lambda/ [https://logentries.com/doc/s3-ingestion-with-lambda/?utm_source=134&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=12

1 min IT Ops

Introducing a Buildbot status plugin for pushing status updates to Logentries

Buildbot is a framework for building continuous deployment and integration systems, it is highly flexible and is written in python. It is also a mature system which a number of large projects use e.g. Mozilla, Chromium, Python – see trac.buildbot.net/wiki/SuccessStories [http://trac.buildbot.net/wiki/SuccessStories] To send build status information — specifically Start, Success and Failure states from Buildbot to Logentries — start by generating a log token from Logentries. [https://logentri

2 min IT Ops

How to Log Messages from Slack

We recently added support for unedited HTTP logging in Logentries. This means you can send us log data via HTTPS drain (from heroku), or via any webhook you want. One webhook that we’ve been looking to log for a while is Slack [https://logentries.com/resources/#plug-ins]. People are always chatting away on Slack, and this data might be useful some day. You can send the data into Logentries however you want, and then worry about what to do it when you actually need it! First, you’ll need to

3 min IT Ops

Logentries recognized by Docker as Ecosystem Technology Partner for Logging

Since last year, we’ve anticipated the impact of Docker [/2014/05/musings-on-the-future-of-docker/] and have been building integrations – first as experiments [/2014/03/how-to-run-rsyslog-in-a-docker-container-for-logging/] and later as full-blown solutions [/2015/07/an-all-inclusive-log-monitoring-container-for-docker/]. It’s therefore with great pleasure that we’re announcing our recognition by Docker as an Ecosystem Technology Partner for Logging. Why Monitor Docker Logs? Most teams that

5 min IT Ops

Analysing Hystrix metrics with Logentries

We’ve been using Hystrix [http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/11/hystrix.html] in production here at Logentries for over a year now [shameless plug: I briefly talked about this [https://speakerdeck.com/m0wfo/clojure-ireland-talk-june-2015] at a Clojure Ireland meetup recently :)] and have found it useful not only for bulkheading [http://martinfowler.com/bliki/CircuitBreaker.html] requests, but for getting fine-grained metrics for internal API calls. Netflix has also open-sourced a funky dashbo

4 min IT Ops

Introducing LEQL: percentile() & median

While analyzing data, it’s important to use a variety of calculations to ensure you get the best insights. Today, we’re excited to announce the availability of our two newest LEQL functions: percentile() and median. percentile() allows you to calculate the number below which a given percentage of your log entries fall. To use a real world example, what was the longest response time for 95% of my application’s users? Similarly, median (or the 50th Percentile) gives you the middle number in a s

4 min IT Ops

Unleash the power of node.js for Shell Scripting (Part 2)

Ready for our first proper node.js Script! In a previous post [/2015/10/20/unleash-the-power-of-node-js-for-shell-scripting-part-1/], we learned about some tools that helped us create a script in node.js. It is now time to put this into practice by implementing a script that connects to a few online newspapers, searches in the news for specific keywords and returns those articles. Our new script will need to accept the following parameters: * A file with the list of newspapers (one URL per li

8 min IT Ops

Java 8: A quick introduction to Parallelism and the Spliterator

Introduction With the release of Java 8 a number of new language features were introduced [1] . These included lambda functions, streams and completable futures. Colleagues of mine have already reviewed these features in previous articles on this blog, which I recommend reading as part of this topic [2] [3]. In this article I will touch on an aspect of the Java 8 release that relates to the push towards exploiting parallelism, in the context of the existing Collections Framework – specifically

5 min IT Ops

Unleash the power of node.js for Shell Scripting (Part 1)

Setting Up Running a Node Script We are going to talk about creating shell scripts with node.js. The first thing that you need to do is install node.js. You can get the installers from https://nodejs.org/en/download/, or use your favorite package manager. Let’s go straight in and write our first script. The first thing to do is to create a file called script.js with the following code: console.log('hello world') We can now execute this script by running the following command in our shell:

3 min IT Ops

Logging from Tableau for Successful DataOps

Lately, we’ve been seeing a growing number of customers using Logentries in support of DataOps – the practice of collecting, normalizing and redistributing data throughout an organization so teams can make smarter business decisions. With teams ranging from engineers to support to marketing & sales relying on data for every day decision making, a critical requirement of those within a DataOps role is to actively monitor their organization’s data platforms. I recently had the pleasure of chatt

4 min IT Ops

Exploring Lambdas and Streams in Java 8

Java 8 introduced a host of new features, including lambda functions and streams. In this article I will focus on these two features as they are the most impactful features that were added in this new version of Java. Lambda Functions If you ever had to write a GUI for an application with an OO language you’ll understand the pain of writing event handlers, such as a mouse click event. So much boilerplate needed because you had to define a disgusting inline class with a single method. With the

6 min Log Management

10 Best Practices for Log Management and Analytics

Introduction Today’s Log Management and Analytics Challenges Within the last decade, the advancement of distributed systems has introduced new complexities in managing log data. Today’s systems can include thousands of server instances or micro- service containers, each generating its own log data. With the rapid emergence and dominance of cloud-based systems, we have witnessed explosive growth in machine-generated log data. As a result, log management [https://www.rapid7.com/fundamentals/what

3 min IT Ops

Revealing Hidden Insights with Docker & timeslice()

Over the last few months, you’ve probably noticed that we’ve been talking about Docker quite a lot – we think this lightweight and powerful way of managing environments is only going to increase in popularity. Docker has been evolving their logging capabilities with each release, so of course we’re interested in how we can help you get log data from Docker into Logentries for quick and powerful analysis. In August, we announced a new way to collect and analyze Docker logs for free with our Doc

1 min IT Ops

Introducing LEQL: SORT()

If you’re familiar with a query language like SQL, you’re likely used to being able to sort your query results. When querying log data, sorting your results can come in handy when you want to analyze things like which Docker containers are using the most memory [/2015/07/an-all-inclusive-log-monitoring-container-for-docker/], or which URLs are being request most frequently from your CDN. Today, we’re announcing SORT as the latest function introduced into Logentries’ query language, LEQL. Much