The LOG Battle: Logstash and Fluentd
Computing systems generate log files. The need for these logs is to track a specific change or event that has happened in the system or on an environment. When the system scales it will be hard to track the log files that are generated, this is the point where every organization has to think about a systematic log management approach.
Centralized Log Management is an approach where the logs that are generated from sub-systems within the same environment are collected, parsed and stored in a central repository in an organized fashion thereby reducing the overall management effort to identify an issue. There are various open-source as well as paid tools available in the market to accomplish this. Some of the examples are Splunk, LogRythm, LogPacker, Logstash, Fluentd, etc.
In this blog, we will be comparing two popular open-source log management tools that can be used to reduce the burden of managing logs.
Logstash and Fluentd
Logstash is part of the popular ELK stack. It is an open-source data processing pipeline that can be used for collecting, parsing, and storing logs from different sources. These logs can either be indexed in Elastic search or can be pushed to storage. Logstash practically accepts inputs from various sources and has more than 50 input plugins which help the user connect with platforms, databases, and applications.
Fluentd is also an open-source data collector that can collect, parse, transform and analyze data and then store it. It is a project of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and has a large number of input plugins that can be used to connect with various platforms for accepting data.
No matter whether you have a Windows or Linux workload, both Logstash and Fluentd are ready to be run. Both do come under the Apache License v 2.0.
How are they different?
Now that we have an idea of what these tools are, let us dive a little deep into the technology behind it. Here in this section, we will try to understand how they are different.
1. Written Language:
Logstash is written in JRuby. JRuby is a Java implementation of the Ruby programming language. This means that your virtual machine should have Java runtime for Logstash to work whereas Fluentd is written in CRuby. CRuby is the C implementation of Ruby programming language.
2. Routing an event:
When it comes to event routing, Logstash and Fluentd have different approaches.
In Logstash, routing an event is through writing if-then statements whereas in Fluentd the routing is based on tags. For a programmer, it will not be much of a hassle to write statements in Logstash but Fluentd has a more straight-forward approach.
3. Plugins:
Fluentd is the clear leader in the number of plugins available compared to the Logstash but there is no centralized repository for accessing these plugins whereas in Logstash you have access to all the plugins in their GitHub repository.
4. Performance:
There is no differentiator that states which one of them is better than the other apart from the fact that Logstash consumes more memory compared to Fluentd. But both these tools offer lightweight shippers to mitigate this issue.
a. Filebeat
Filebeat is a lightweight log-shipper for logstash. It can be installed as an agent on your server to collect operational data. Since it is lightweight it does not consume system resources compared to Logstash. It has several modules that can help in parsing, collecting and visualization of logs. Moreover, it is container ready so in case if you are looking to build a container-based solution you can run Filebeat inside a container in the same Virtual Machine.
b. Fluentbit
Fluentbit is also a lightweight shipper which allows the collection of data from different sources and send them to multiple locations. Fluentbit is also container ready.
Which one to use?
This is a tough call! Both Fluentd and Logstash are backed by very active communities so you will have several plugins to choose from depending on your requirement. Considering the event routing approach if you are building a complex solution Fluentd will be more convenient for you. Since Fluentd is compatible with both Elasticsearch and Kibana you can use it with both of them to search and dashboard your data. Otherwise, you can go with the native ELK stack.
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