Tips from the Team

Tips for using Papertrail to manage log files at scale

Managing log files on a single server is a cakewalk, and familiar tools such as grep, tail, and sed can expose the data you need. But it’s a completely different story once you’re working at scale and need to analyze logs across tens, hundreds, or even thousands of machines. In this case, the best solution is to aggregate your logs in the cloud and use a log viewer to analyze your logs holistically. Fortunately, that’s exactly what SolarWinds^® Papertrail^™ does.

Parsing Common Log Formats With Papertrail

When setting up logging for your apps and services for the first time, it’s natural to want to focus on the content of the messages; you want to make sure you have all the information you need when you use your logs to troubleshoot issues. But picking your log format is just as important.

Tips for Creating the Most Useful Syslog Messages Possible

Imagine the software you’ve just pushed to production is causing latency spikes for users visiting your web app. Your code passed all the tests but something about running with real-life users has uncovered a bug not previously caught by your automated testing. Now you need to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.

7 Problems to Look out for When Analyzing Garbage Collection Logs

Modern garbage collectors use sophisticated algorithms to manage unused memory, so you don’t have to. But when things aren’t working right, you need a way to peek under the hood and troubleshoot issues. Analyzing garbage collection (GC) logs can provide key insights into the behavior and performance of programming languages using automatic memory management, such as Java. If you suspect you’ve got a memory problem with your Java app, the GC log is the first place to look.

Tips to Get the Most Out of Your IIS Logs

Wouldn’t it be great if web apps and websites just worked the way they did in testing and staging? Unfortunately, it seems as soon as you release them into the wild, things start going wrong. When you’re getting calls from users or seeing availability alerts, getting your hands on the right data from your IIS logs can make a big difference in how quickly you respond.

11 Tools You Should Be Monitoring With Syslog

Syslog has been around for four decades, and it’s a well-used tool in every DevOps and admin tool kit. The syslog format began as part of the Sendmail project, and it has since become a ubiquitous logging protocol used by hundreds of applications and supported out of the box by most major operating systems. This battle-tested logging format provides all the pieces you need to create actionable log messages and diagnose problems with your apps and services.

Logging With NGINX – How to Configure It and What to Watch Out For

NGINX is a high-performance and reliable web server, capable of handling huge amounts of traffic for the internet’s busiest websites. When troubleshooting, you need a way to make sense of traffic and NGINX provides flexible logging features to capture valuable details and help you understand the behavior of your web server.

Free AppOptics Dev Edition (APM for your test environment)

SolarWinds® AppOptics™ Dev Edition is a free, full-function APM tool for developers and quality assurance teams.

• Test and troubleshoot your application’s performance in a pre-production environment
• Debug distributed applications while they’re in development
• Catch bugs early, and gain full visibility and insight into the applications you’re developing

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7 Best Practices for C# Logging (With Examples)

In the world of software development, logging often takes a backseat to unit testing and documentation. But logging is a powerful tool for debugging in production, and it provides vital data on the real-world use of your application. When things stop working, it’s the data in the logs that both the dev and operations teams use to troubleshoot the issue and quickly fix the problem.

Linux Log Monitoring – Seven Aspects to Pay Attention To

Monitoring application and Linux system logs is a skill that every seasoned SysAdmin has down cold. Logs provide a window into understanding the health of your systems, and they’re the first place to look when things aren’t working. But no matter how familiar you are with Linux log monitoring, even gurus of the command line can learn new tricks. Whether you’re an old hand or a relative newcomer, here are seven tips on how to monitor log files in Linux that you may have overlooked.