LogDNA announced major product updates to its popular log
management solution and VMblog had an opportunity to catch up with Peter Cho today,
VP of Product Management, to discuss what this means for users and how
Kubernetes is involved.
VMblog: To kick things off, can you first tell us a little about
LogDNA?
Peter Cho: Modern development is
complex, requiring a scalable solution that can keep up with demand. Data is
spread across multiple clouds, data centers, IoT devices and PoS systems.
Simply storing data is not enough. The only way to get full value from data is
to ensure it is reliable and accessible. LogDNA provides detailed insights for engineering and
DevOps professionals to easily and quickly gather all systems and application
logs into one intuitive platform.
VMblog: What makes LogDNA
different from other log management tools?
Cho: LogDNA offers an innovative approach for
users through natural language and time search using Google-like search syntax,
adding speed and efficiency to log searches. The solution searches logs at
incredible speeds from megabytes to petabytes. Its fast search combined with
auto- and custom-parsing and smart alerting helps users quickly uncover the
logs they want. LogDNA allows its users to set exclusion rules, so only
the logs that matter to them are stored, putting the customer in control of all
logs from the beginning. Usage alerts also enable them to stay on top of their spend, allowing users to get
notified when they approach certain thresholds.
VMblog: How does LogDNA support
Kubernetes?
Cho: LogDNA is a consumer of Kubernetes itself so it made
sense for us to decide several years ago to focus our product on Kubernetes.
The LogDNA agent is written in the Rust programming language and is tailored
specific to highly scalable environments, allowing users to collect application
logs from all containers running in their Kubernetes cluster in minutes. LogDNA
is developed for users running 1,000 or 100,000 containers, helping them
quickly aggregate, parse, search and monitor logs across all nodes and pods in
a single centralized location.
VMblog: And what are you announcing
today that is new to the product?
Cho: We announced significant
performance and usability updates that enable developers to more easily query, filter and gain
insight from their log data. The new features help developers identify and
resolve issues to reduce downtime and quickly fix performance
issues. Specifically we announced V2 of our agent which was rewritten in
Rust for high
throughput performance and leverages the Linux kernel, hourly archiving, new extract and aggregate fields that
allow users to extract and aggregate and export fields from log lines
that have already been indexed, and new custom webhooks enabling customers to easily integrate LogDNA alerts
with additional 3rd-party services of their choice, such as JIRA or Microsoft
Teams.
VMblog: Finally, what's next for LogDNA?
Cho: We are looking deeper into infrastructure as
code and are always looking for ways to improve the customer experience. The
problem customers face today is not about gaining intelligence, but it is
dealing with the chaos from their legacy systems while running Kubernetes. It
has become too complex for developers. Our future will be to continue to
deliver a pragmatic solution for developer pain points.
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