Last updated at Mon, 30 Oct 2017 19:19:31 GMT

In ye olden times, log-based monitoring was narrowly focused on tracking down and identifying exceptions. But those days are long gone, and logs are becoming the defacto method of extracting crucial data from your systems, be this the traditional error and exception identification; monitoring the performance of servers and your application; and now evaluating your customer’s usage of your application.

24_7_anouncementsToday, logs can provide deep analysis beyond traditional issue alerting, offering insight across  your whole system so you can be proactively notified when specific events happen within your applications, your systems, and your users.

When issues or important system events do occur, you no longer are restricted to simple email alerting, but can use iPhone app notifications, Web Hooks and can also be notified through your existing tools including HipChat, Campfire and PagerDuty. You can easily control how and to whom your alerts are delivered..

**Here are some simple, but interesting metrics that Logentries customers are alerting on today:  **

Security:

  • If there are more than ten invalid log-on attempts within a one-minute period.
  • If ACLs are changed.
  • If new routing rules are added/modified.
  • If new user accounts are added.

Application quality:

  • If response time exceeds a certain amount more than 100 times in an hour.
  • If you are sending 404 responses above an established or expected threshold.
  • If CPU usage is trending above an established or expected  threshold.
  • If network traffic peaks above an established or expected volume.

Product Usage

  • If a customer spends more than $700 dollars on a sale (or whatever number your business is tracking).
  • If a new/existing feature is getting high levels, or particularly low levels, of usage (do they like it? do they hate it?)
  • If specific customers are getting 400 error (monitor VIP users’ experience)
  • When you get your 1,000,000 user registration (Nice!)

As you can see from the above examples, alerting from your log files can do so much more than just let you know when you see an exception or error.

It can help you proactively grow your business by ensuring that you react instantly to key events, from security issues, to system performance, and even real-time user behavior in order to ensure that your customers are getting the best service, and those uber important customers are getting that VIP service that they deserve.

Alert on more than just errors, alert on the things in real-time that will help your business grow and thrive. Create a free Logentries account now and try it in your own environment!