Understanding log management challenges

Logs are nothing but streams of events coming from a running process. For traditional JEE applications, a number of frameworks and libraries are available to log. Java Logging (JUL) is an option off the shelf from Java itself. Log4j, Logback, and SLF4J are some of the other popular logging frameworks available. These frameworks support both UDP as well as TCP protocols for logging. Applications send log entries to the console or to the filesystem. File recycling techniques are generally employed to avoid logs filling up all the disk space.

One of the best practices of log handling is to switch off most of the log entries in production due to the high cost of disk IOs. Not only do disk IOs slow down the application, but they can also severely impact scalability. Writing logs into the disk also requires high disk capacity. An out-of-disk-space scenario can bring down the application. Logging frameworks provide options to control logging at runtime to...