Logging as a Service (LaaS) - A podcast
The other day, Andreas from Nemertes posted a blog on The missing piece of cloud security?. In his blog post, Andreas talks about how there is no real solution for handling logs in the cloud. Due to the fact that Loggly has been in private beta, I can’t really say that Andreas is wrong.
Instead (or in addition to) reading the rest of this blog, listen to the podcast that we recorded last Wednesday as a follow up to Andreas’ blog entry.
Loggly is the first logging as a service (LaaS) platform.
In his blog post, Andreas mentions a number of challenges associated with customers doing their own log management in the cloud: (I took the freedom to expand the list a bit)
- Ephemeral virtual machines ask for log centralization.
- Centralization of logs creates a single point of failure.
- Installation and maintenance of a logging server takes time and costs resources (and money).
- Knowledgeable (and expensive) personnel is required to configure logging solutions and maintain them.
- Static solutions (installing your own log management tool) do not fit into the cloud model of “pay as you go”.
- Building a scalable and reliable logging solution in the cloud is hard and expensive.
These reasons and a number of others are the foundation of Loggly. We are eliminating these problems for our customers.
Let me continue along Andrea’s blog post. He moves on to talk about the benefits and use-cases for a logging as a service platform:
- security information management
- regulatory compliance, incident response and post-incident forensics
- control, visibility and resilience, while preserving “chain of custody” for audit purposes
In my view, these are fantastic use-cases for a logging as a service platform, but there are so many other uses, especially in the world of Web applications. There is a big big ecosystem around application logging that benefits greatly from a logging as a service platform. And to support that ecosystem, we will keep innovating and adding new features to our platform. A step into that direction are our new HTTP inputs that allow you to send HTTP posts containing log messages.
Want to know more? Sign up for the Loggly Beta ?
Kord 11 Oct, 2010 03:08pm
Andreas, can you expound on your ‘metered’ needs?
Andreas 11 Oct, 2010 03:01pm
On a more serious note. Not really that worried about who came first. I’m more concerned about who delivers on requirements logging-as-a-service.
My criteria for cloud, whether CPU, storage, or logs are the same:
- Elastic, on-demand
- Metered, as fine-grained as possible
- Programmable through open APIs, preferably RESTful
- Open standards based (ok this one will have to wait)
If at all possible, I would also like to see services that are re-sold by IaaS providers so that I can get common credentials, common API, common billing and common reporting.
We will be working on this topic as part of our next round of research. We will be asking enterprise customers about their requirements and desires and evaluating vendor offerings.
Thanks for the post Raffy!
Andreas 11 Oct, 2010 02:57pm
@Burt:
He’s a lumberjack and he’s ok,
He sleeps all night and he works all day.
He cuts down trees. He skips and jumps.
He likes to press wild flowers.
He puts on women’s clothing
And hangs around in bars?!
Stephan Wehner 8 Oct, 2010 10:43pm
Loggly is the first logging as a service (LaaS) platform?
$ whois loggly.com | egrep ‘Domain Name:|Creation’ | sort -u
Creation Date: 25-may-2009
Domain Name: LOGGLY.COM
$ whois loggingit.com | egrep ‘domain:|created’
Registrars.domain: loggingit.com
created: 2008-10-15 01:01:14 UTC
I’m sure Loggly has a different take on “logging” compared to Logging It.
Cheers,
Stephan
Burt Gertrum 10 Oct, 2010 06:02pm
Both y’all ain’t the first logging as a service company on the Internets. We wuz hauling logs and stuff YEARS before you whippersnappers were pounding sand.
$ whois guldenschuhlogging.com | egrep ‘Domain Name:|Creation’ | sort -u
Creation Date: 27-sep-2007
Domain Name: GULDENSCHUHLOGGING.COM
I don’t know what Loggly’s does, and don’t care, but ships logs ain’t lumber you loggingit fella. If you ain’t haulin’ lumber, you ain’t worth the e in egrep.
I’ve said my piece.
Burt
P.S. I like them there beavers.
http://girlswholift.wordpress.com/ 21 Apr, 2013 08:09am
After I originally commented I appear to have clicked on the
Notify me when new comments are addedcheckbox and now every time a comment is added I recieve four emails withthe same comment. Is there a means you can remove me from that service?
Appreciate it!