About Snapshot Manager logging mechanism
Snapshot Manager uses the Fluentd-based logging framework for log data collection and consolidation. Fluentd is an open source data collector that provides a unified logging layer for structured log data collection and consumption.
For more information on Fluentd, refer to Fluentd website.
All the Snapshot Manager container services generate and publish service logs to the configured Docker logging driver. The logging driver is the fluentd framework that is running as a separate flexsnap-fluentd container on the Snapshot Manager host. With the Fluentd framework, these individual service logs are now structured and routed to the Fluentd data collector from where they are sent to the configured output plug-ins. The MongoDB collection and the flexsnap-fluentd container logs are the two output plug-ins that are configured by default.
Using Fluentd-based logging provides several benefits including the following:
A persistent structured repository that stores the logs of all the Snapshot Manager services
A single stream of all Snapshot Manager logs (vs disparate individual log files) makes it easy to trail and monitor specific logs
Metadata associated with the logs allow for a federated search that speeds up troubleshooting
Ability to integrate and push Snapshot Manager logs to a third-party tool for analytics and automation