Log Monitoring Made Easy: 10 Essential Tools for IT Administrators in 2024

In IT terminology, logging stands for the automated recording of events and status messages that are continuously generated during the operation of IT systems or the execution of software processes, such as error or status messages. The task of log monitoring and management is to collect, summarize and store all this log data.

FAQs about Log Monitoring:

• What are Log monitoring tools?, Log monitoring & the Law, Log monitoring and SIEM, investing in Log Monitoring, what to look for in these tools?, Log Monitoring How-To
• Log monitoring tools

This is what makes it possible to search, analyze and create reports in the first place. The log files created by logging contain information and events that are time-stamped and arranged chronologically in the file. Since the files are often limited in size, either several files are created, or the content is overwritten after a certain time.

Administrators use log monitoring tools to detect important events that appear in the log files. These tools provide important alerting, correlation and trending capabilities that allow admins to make sense of a torrent of information that would be impossible, or too time-consuming, to parse manually.

In this article, we will discuss the main features of logging tools, how they relate to legal requirements, the benefits they may bring to your business and share some tips on choosing the one that best fit your needs. We will also present 10 of the best log monitoring tools in the market, for business of all sizes.

Frequently Asked Questions About Log Monitoring

What are Log Monitoring Tools?

Log monitoring tools monitor log files generated by the servers, applications, and devices by detecting patterns in these files and alerting users to them. In doing so, the software helps identify performance and security issues and resolve them.

Log monitoring and management tools must fulfill numerous requirements, such as:

• Collecting the log data supplied by the various systems
• Unifying the log data in a central location
• Saving, archiving and retaining the log data
• Providing analysis, search and reporting functions

Is Log Monitoring a Legal Requirement?

Log monitoring is an essential IT practice, but the legal aspect depends on your business and jurisdiction. Some industries, such as financial or healthcare, are subject to regulations such as HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act) or the DSGVO (General Data Protection Regulation). These regulations, which are legal obligations, establish compliance guidelines related to the traceability of transactions, which must be ensured. Log monitoring is an essential part of that.

What is the relationship between log monitoring and SIEM?

When talking about log monitoring, the term SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) comes up often. This allows security-relevant events, security incidents or discrepancies in IT infrastructures to be detected and thus actions to be taken for automated alerting.

SIEM solutions enable events to be secured forensically and also provide an overview of the IT security situation and give security experts insights into the activities of the systems. Logs are one essential source of information fed into a SIEM, hence the relationship between those terms.

Why Should You Invest in Log Monitoring?

There are many reasons to invest in Log Monitoring. Here are five of them, in no particular order.

• Performance optimization: continuous monitoring can help you pinpoint issues and identify opportunities for optimization that will improve the performance of your systems, sometimes without the need for hardware upgrades.

• Security: monitoring allows you to spot early signs of uncommon behavior or usage patterns indicative of an intrusion attempt or ongoing attack. This will give you time to react and deploy countermeasures before a data breach occurs.

• Resource allocation: find out where resources are being underutilized or overutilized, allowing you to redistribute them according to real needs to ensure the most effective usage of your systems.

• Proactive maintenance: monitoring allows you to detect and fix potential issues before they become critical and result in outages that may affect the performance of your applications or even the profitability of your business.

• Regulatory compliance: as we said, businesses that handle sensitive information, like financial or healthcare data, need to meet strict regulatory standards that specify how this information is stored and handled. Monitoring will allow you to prove compliance with these standards and secure approvals that may be crucial to keep your business running.

What to Look for When Choosing Log Monitoring Tools?

Broadly speaking, there are 5 main features you need to look out for when choosing log monitoring tools. Keep in mind that this may vary according to your specific needs.

• The capability to monitor logs in many aspects of your infrastructure at once.
• A centralized display of information from many sensors for better observability.
• Customizable alerts and automated notifications when alerts are triggered.
• Native and automated reporting features, so you can keep co-workers and management “in the loop”.
• A free trial period, so you can attest to how the tool works with your network infrastructure.

How to do Log Monitoring?

There are many log monitoring tools, from as many different vendors, which may focus solely on a single aspect of the task or offer this capability as a subset of a broader range of features. We present a few of them below, in no particular order.

The Best Log Monitoring Tools

Paessler PRTG

Paessler PRTG is often called the Swiss army knife of the monitoring world. It is based on basic monitoring elements called “sensors”. One sensor usually monitors one measured value in your network, e.g. the traffic of a switch port, the CPU load of a server, the free space of a disk drive, and so on.

PRTG includes more than 250 built-in sensors for various tasks, device types, and use cases, and they can be combined as needed, which opens monitoring possibilities. Among those, two different sensors are available specifically for log monitoring and management.

The Event Log Windows API sensor is designed to capture Windows event log messages, as its name suggests. However, instead of triggering based on a specific message type or keyword pattern, this sensor monitors the rate of log messages and issues an alert when the rate reaches a critical threshold.

The other log-related sensor is the Syslog Receiver, which aggregates messages and sends a warning message when either a specific message type is received or when the rate of specific messages exceeds a threshold.

PRTG Network Monitor is available either with perpetual licenses (starting at US$ 1.899) or subscription licenses (starting at US$ 159 monthly), a flexible and affordable pricing scheme when compared with other tools. A 30-day free trial is available. There is also a free version for personal use that lets you monitor up to 100 sensors at no charge.

ManageEngine EventLog Analyzer

ManageEngine EventLog Analyzer is a log management and IT compliance software that provides solutions for collecting, analyzing, correlating, and archiving log data to ensure network security.

However, the feature list goes beyond simple log management, and includes application, network device and cross-platform auditing, IT compliance management, security and threat analytics and more.

This utility can collect, manage, analyze, correlate and search log data from over 750 sources. Custom log parsers allow you to analyze any human-readable log format: fields are read and extracted, and you can mark additional fields for better analysis of unsupported or third-party application log formats.

It uses a combination of agentless and agent-based log collection, but also gives you the option to import logs directly if desired. With a frequency of 25,000 messages per second and real-time attack detection, it can also quickly perform forensic analysis and reduce the potential impact of a breach.

Like other ManageEngine products, pricing for EventLog Analyzer is only available by quote. There is a free edition, which is limited to five log sources, and also a 30-day free trial of the Premium Edition, with all the features enabled during the trial period.

Splunk

Splunk is an AI-powered observability and security platform based on a data streaming architecture that can help you prevent major issues, recover from incidents faster, and accelerate transformation, with tools to help you stay secure, compliant, and reliable.

This tool is well known in system administration and monitoring. Log file sources (whether text file data originating from a remote system, syslog, trap, or other data stream) are aggregated, indexed, and stored on the server running Splunk. A data sorting and filtering utility called Splunk Log Observer is built in, as are functions for alerting, writing to files, and more.

It allows you to visualize real-time metrics and traces alongside log events for context, create codeless queries with an intuitive interface and pre-packaged dashboards, or design custom dashboards for better monitoring and root cause analysis. Logs can be easily transferred to Splunk’s Search and Reporting for advanced analysis, and unused log data can be stored in third-party locations for storage optimization.

Splunk is SaaS (Software as a Service), with subscription rates that vary by business plan. You can choose between pricing by workload, amount of data ingested, or number of entities or activities being monitored. A 14-day free trial of the cloud platform is available.

XpoLog

XpoLog is a comprehensive and fully automated log management and analysis solution that significantly reduces complexity and costs through automation, ML/AI parsing, and integration with popular services like Logstash/ELK.

This tool can analyze data from a variety of sources, including Apache server logs, AWS, Windows and Linux event logs, and Microsoft IIS. Locations and files that fall within a specified scope in selected sources are monitored, and the log files are aggregated.

Once the data is centralized, it is merged into the XpoLog database for processing. These records can be searched and filtered for analysis, and the results can be written to files and analyzed by date or by other criteria. An advanced log search engine filters and understands logs, applying complex functions to aggregate and correlate events.

XpoLog automatically detects and matches analytics apps, providing ready-to-use reports for security, performance, audit, errors, trends, and anomalies. It also offers real-time insights instantly by detecting errors, exceptions, anomalies, and unique patterns.

XpoLog is SaaS, and pricing varies with the amount of data ingested, starting at US$ 83 per month for 1 GB per day. A free trial is available.

Graylog

Graylog is an open-source log management tool that can be used to analyze, normalize and enrich logs and event data. Processing rules allow you to set multiple options for routing messages, blacklisting, and whitelisting, and modifying log messages before they move to the next processing stage.

Graylog also has a robust dashboard feature that allows you to filter out readings from log messages and then display them in a variety of ways, including graphs and charts. Of course, alerts and notifications are also possible, with integration with SMS gateways, Slack, PagerDuty, and email.

Data widgets can be combined to create customized dashboards that show the information you need. A fast search engine allows you to “search terabytes of data in milliseconds”, and searches and results can be saved to save time and share expertise. The same widgets you use for search results and dashboards can be used to easily build reports with automated delivery via email.

The core log management functionality of Graylog is available in a free tool called Graylog Open. Extra features, like additional offline archiving, user audit logs, support and an “implementation quick start” to help you get up and running faster, are part of the Graylog Operations solution, with prices starting at US$ 1.250 per month for 10 GB of ingested data per day.

SolarWinds Loggly

SolarWinds Loggly offers a comprehensive cloud-based service for proactive monitoring, log analysis, and collaboration, enabling users to visualize, analyze, inspect, and solve issues across their systems and applications efficiently.

This tool is agent-free and uses open standards for log data transfer, ensuring compatibility with any system without dependency on proprietary agents. It supports logging from various environments including public or private clouds, AWS, Azure, data centers, hybrid environments, devices, containers, and various operating systems.

Loggly caters to enterprises with a multi-tenant SaaS solution that is secure, fast, scalable, and highly available. Features include proactive monitoring to view app performance and system behavior, troubleshooting with logs to trace issues to their root cause, and DevOps integrations with tools like Slack, GitHub, and Jira.

Data analysis and reporting capabilities allow users to analyze and visualize data, track SLA compliance, and spot trends. The current version introduces improved charting capabilities for faster visualization of data and enhanced dashboards for organizing data effectively.

Loggly is SaaS available in three subscription tiers: Standard, Pro and Enterprise. Prices start at US$ 79 per month for the Standard tier, which has a data ingestion cap of 1 GB per day and a retention time of 15 days. There is also a free tier, but limited to a data retention window of 7 days and 200 MB of data per day. A 30-day free trial is available.

Logstash

Logstash, part of the Elastic Stack, provides a flexible and open-source solution for collecting, analyzing, and enriching data from any source in any format. It offers extensive capabilities for data ingestion, transformation, and routing, making it a powerful tool for managing data pipelines.

It provides a pluggable architecture with over 200 plugins for customizing data pipelines, and allows easy development of custom plugins with a dedicated API and plugin generator. Filters can be used to automatically transform data as it travels from source to storage, allowing you to get structure from unstructured data, derive geolocation coordinates from IP addresses, anonymize PII (Personally Identifiable Information), and more.

Logstash ensures data pipeline durability with node failure resilience and dead letter queues for unprocessed events, supports scaling for ingestion spikes without external queuing layers and provides full pipeline security. There are also comprehensive monitoring and visualization tools for monitoring pipeline performance and availability.

Logstash is part of the Elastic Cloud, available in four subscription tiers (Standard, Gold, Platinum and Enterprise), with prices starting at US$ 95 per month, but varying with your storage and processing requirements. A free trial is available.

Sematext Logs

Sematext Logs offers comprehensive log monitoring tools and software that enable real-time collection, analysis, and correlation of log data from various sources across an IT infrastructure.

The platform offers centralized log monitoring capabilities, allowing users to monitor logs from various sources from a single interface. It supports automated log discovery for easy setup and facilitates real-time monitoring, alerting, and reporting, enabling users to create dashboards for system-wide visibility and set up meaningful alerts.

Users can leverage live log tail functionality to gain instant visibility into events and utilize filtering options for efficient log searching and analysis. Log data can be correlated with metrics and events in real time, facilitating faster troubleshooting and root cause identification.

Sematext Logs is part of the Sematext Cloud and available in three monthly subscription tiers (Basic, Standard and Pro). Basic is Free, but with a data retention window of only 7 days and an ingestion cap of 500 MB per day. The Standard tier starts at US$ 50 per month, with the same retention window but double the ingestion volume. There is a 14-day free trial available.

Mezmo

Mezmo offers powerful log management capabilities, including automatic parsing, customizable search parameters, and flexible log storage options, catering to the needs of DevOps, ITOps, and developer teams.

This tool offers variable log retention, allowing you to store logs only for the time they are needed (instead of a blanket time period), and helping you avoid unnecessary costs. Speaking of costs, there is protection against usage spikes in the form of Index Rate Alerting and Usage Quotas to set limits to the number of logs stored.

Exclusion rules allow you to determine what is stored, and what is not, and logs can be archived to object storage platforms, like S3, for compliance or later review. If those logs are needed, they can be easily brought back into the Mezmo UI for viewing or searching.

Log analysis with Mezmo is available in three tiers: Community, Professional and Enterprise. The Community tier is free, but is limited to 25 users and offers no data retention. The Professional tier starts at US$ 0.80 per GB with 3-day retention and features such as custom parsing, log data restoration, usage control and alerts via Slack, Email, Webhooks, PagerDuty and others. A 14-day free trial is available.

Datadog Log Management

Datadog Log Management offers a comprehensive solution for collecting, monitoring, managing, and analyzing logs, metrics, and traces in a single platform, enabling rapid troubleshooting, centralized processing, and scalable log management.

Features include rapid troubleshooting with no complex querying language required, interactive dashboards, Log Patterns for trend analysis, and Pattern Inspector for deeper insights. Datadog allows users to process, enrich, and route logs from a single control panel, leveraging out-of-the-box log processing pipelines for over 200 common technologies.

Datadog’s Flex Logs feature enables flexible storage, querying, and retention of logs, supporting simple or complex log queries directly within the platform. Features like Log Forwarding allow users to centralize routing of processed logs to third-party destinations, such as data lakes or SIEM vendors.

Log ingestion with Datadog starts at US$ 0.10 per GB per month, but keep in mind that features like log retention, “rehydration” for audits and analysis and forwarding are charged separately, which can quickly add up. A 14-day free trial is available.

Conclusion

As we said, there are log monitoring tools for businesses of all sizes, and every kind of budget, from Open Source solutions that won’t cost you a dime to cloud-based platforms that can do much more than log monitoring.

Among all these, our favorite log monitoring tool is Paessler PRTG because it “ticks all the boxes” in our list of desired characteristics and streamlines your workflow by enabling you to monitor all of your infrastructure with a single tool.

The built-in sensors cover many of the main use cases, without the need to purchase extras, so it can monitor your logs, but also your network, services, servers, IoT devices, cloud infrastructure, and much more. And it is extensible, which means you can deploy third-party sensors, or even develop your own, to cover specific needs.

That means you can do away with having to rely on a variety of individualized solutions, which can carry potential risks such as conflict with your current workflow and even network security issues. It really is a “Swiss army knife” of the monitoring tools.