Logging

Logging is the process of recording events and activities that occur in an application or system. Logs provide visibility into the inner workings and health of a system. Key terms related to logging include log messages, log levels, log files, and log aggregation.

In cloud native applications, logging is essential for monitoring and troubleshooting. Logs are generated by the application code and capture information like errors, warnings, or just events occurring during normal operation. Log levels allow developers to specify how verbose the logging should be. For example, ERROR logs record critical issues, while DEBUG logs add very detailed tracing. These log messages are written to log files, which are usually text files stored locally or in cloud storage. To centralize and analyze logs across many servers or containers, log aggregation tools like Elasticsearch, Splunk or Datadog are used. With aggregated logs, you can graph trends, set alerts for problems, and efficiently search through historical log data to identify issues. Robust logging and monitoring provides observability into complex, distributed cloud native systems.