Whether you’re a small startup with just a few network devices, or a major corporation with devices across the country, your success rests on efficient and safe network performance. IT infrastructure management is a wide umbrella that takes into account a wide range of different services — from monitoring to troubleshooting, from application management to hardware management.

In this article, we’ll discuss one of the most important components of any IT management enterprise — log monitoring. Log monitoring allows you to establish a centralized approach to identifying threats, troubleshooting performance issues, and optimizing network performance.

There are several types of log monitoring, depending on the type of log and its source. Admins can monitor logs from higher-layer sources, including application logs and system logs. Log monitoring is also essential for network devices, such as servers, routers, switches, and firewalls. Since log monitoring for network devices is a common and essential component of any log management system, this article will focus specifically on monitoring network logs.

Regardless of your network’s size, log monitoring serves as a crucial entryway to preventing, identifying, and addressing issues on your network devices. The main idea of log monitoring is to help you analyze log data from a centralized server. Instead of simply using your devices’ preinstalled monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities, a unified approach to network management can identify threats fast, and keep your business running.

Because event logs come from a variety of sources, a log monitoring server helps you to consolidate your log data into a single management system. When you monitor network logs, you can identify issues with network devices before they cause significant downtime — or worse, compromise security.

Network log monitoring can monitor a diverse range of event types. Your log monitoring server also records data from any events occurring on your network devices, moving between your network devices, and coming into your network from outside sources. To identify performance issues, log monitoring allows you to view error messages, device restarts, router events, and more. To identify security issues, event logs allow you to see who has accessed data, and when. Your monitoring server can also keep track of firewall activity, so you can quickly detect threats to your devices.

Within your IT infrastructure, any event created by network-layer devices can become an event log. But collecting logs is only the first step — once your log monitoring tools have centralized event log collection, it’s time for your IT team to identify and troubleshoot issues.

Every interaction on every device creates an event log, so the most effective log monitoring tools will sort logs into intuitive log files, with a user-friendly database format. Successful log monitoring requires a keen eye for performance issues — which event logs indicate a broader issue within your network? Log monitoring servers can also help to file log data, and to flag potential issues using performance thresholds.

Log monitoring takes on a variety of shapes and forms. You can use logs to troubleshoot past events, as well as identifying real-time issues with fast-acting monitoring software. For a complete log monitoring approach, your IT team will use a combination of historical and real-time log monitoring strategies.

IT admins most commonly use three different protocols for log monitoring: Syslog monitoring, SNMP traps, and Windows events monitoring. Each of these protocols is important in a complete log monitoring approach, and the most effective monitoring solutions will use logs from all three sources.

Syslog protocol

Syslog is the major protocol for network log monitoring. Syslog is widely used to identify security events, as well as to flag internal network performance issues. The syslog setup contains three main components: the device, the relay, and the syslog server. The procedure is pretty simple: each syslog device generates logs, which are sent via the relay procedure to your syslog server. Once your logs have arrived at the syslog server, you can access event logs from a database within the server.

The goal of the syslog protocol is to document as many details as possible, from every event on your syslog devices. Log data includes event timestamps, IP addresses and switch access data, network configuration data, and more. For effective troubleshooting, your team can customize syslog messages to identify relevant threats. If you suspect an event has occurred deep in the past, you can also use an intuitive syslog file to sort historical log data.

SNMP (SNMP traps)

Although syslog messages are useful in identifying threatening network events, the main purpose of the syslog protocol is to troubleshoot historical event data. When it comes to real-time event detection, the SNMP protocol is widely viewed as the best option for identifying security threats quickly.

There are plenty of similarities between the syslog protocol and SNMP — the two protocols use messaging to alert the centralized log management server of unusual events. You can deploy SNMP agents on the same types of network devices that serve as syslog devices. Additionally, you can use the SNMP protocol for both real-time and historical log analysis.

The difference between SNMP and syslog is that SNMP provides an event-based solution to log monitoring. Once your SNMP agent has identified a noteworthy event based on customizable performance thresholds, your team will receive a real-time message. These messages are called SNMP traps (other steps of the SNMP protocol include get, get-response, set, and others). The trap is the source of your real-time event data, which provides a detailed list of log specifics for rapid troubleshooting. To ensure a fast and secure data communication, SNMP traps travel in the form of numerical OIDs, which are then decoded by the SNMP server.

Windows events

The Windows operating system generates a unique type of event log, which is communicated to your Windows server. An advantage of Windows event logs for smaller networks is that your business will not require any additional log polling agents, or a new log collection server. Depending on the number of Windows devices in your network, the Windows event protocol may be a minor or major component of your log monitoring process.

Windows event logs can be viewed using Windows Event Viewer, a centralized collection of logs that allows you to file and sort logs, and to identify unusual logs in your system. Windows event protocol can be especially useful in historical log management, which gives it a similar use as syslog.

Because Windows event processing is already available with Windows devices, your IT team can decide whether Windows event logs are worth pursuing. Windows event logs are often monitored alongside syslog messages and SNMP traps. When you diversify your log management approach with different protocols, your team can detect any issues that might be missed, and maximize the reach of your log monitoring.

In log monitoring, the syslog server is your main point of contact for historical log data. A syslog server operates in a similar fashion to other log management systems — with a centralized log collection location (the server) where syslog data is stored, filed, and interpreted into syslog messages.

The syslog server is especially useful if you’re monitoring network devices on lower layers of the OSI model. Within your network, the syslog server operates with an intuitive client-server structure, communicating between the syslog server and the syslog devices. Whenever an event occurs on one of your network devices, the syslog server receives log data for your team to monitor.

The major goal of your syslog server is to standardize and centralize log management. Without syslog, IT admins are left to create your own log collection protocol. Even for the most savvy systems engineers, this process is time consuming at best and ineffective at worst. Because your network devices are constantly creating logs, the high volume of log output demands a streamlined approach to log management. With a syslog server, your team can receive all of your logs in a single location, soon after they are generated.

In addition to improving the efficiency of log collection, the server helps with filing and categorization. Delivering your logs to the central server is just the first step in an effective log management solution — next, you’ll need to troubleshoot the data in your server. With a high volume of logs, troubleshooting would be time consuming and inaccurate without the right filing system. To make troubleshooting a user-friendly process, the server creates syslog messages with specific conditions to detect network performance issues.

Even though syslog servers follow a standard protocol, not all are created equal. SolarWinds Kiwi Syslog Server NG provides a user-friendly representation of syslog data, with interactive visuals and message filters you can set with the click of a button. Other open-source syslog servers take a less graphical approach. Investing in a server with an easy-to-use interface can go a long way in saving time and hassle in the long run.

Log monitoring tools bridge the gap between log collection and your IT team. Whether you’re monitoring logs for a small LAN or a major corporate network, you’ll need to make your log monitoring process as efficient and as accurate as possible. That’s where a log monitoring tool comes in — log monitoring tools help to present multiple log collection servers in a single interface, and to provide log analytics for troubleshooting.

Log monitoring requires a log server to collect hundreds of logs every day, from every device on your network. In addition to the high volume of data, successful IT teams know that one type of log server isn’t enough. To cover all your bases, you’ll need to monitor syslog data as well as SNMP traps — syslog is commonly used for historical data dives, and SNMP traps are for real-time issue detection. For Windows devices, it’s also helpful to monitor Windows event logs.

With a log monitoring tool, your team can combine your syslog, SNMP, and Windows events servers into a single monitoring tool. Instead of switching back and forth among different log servers, log monitoring tools allow you to streamline the log monitoring process. Log monitoring tools can also improve your troubleshooting efficiency, with built-in analytics, automated graphs, and customizable thresholds to detect unusual events as soon as they occur.

Another major advantage of log monitoring tools is their ability to generate audit reports. Many industries — from finance, to medicine, to education administration — are overseen by regulatory organizations that conduct audits. Because audits intend to ensure the security of your IT infrastructure, many auditors will request a report of your log data. Instead of manually creating an audit report, a log monitoring tool can generate reports based on your specific audit criteria.

The goal of log monitoring is pretty straightforward. First, you’ll collect log data from your network devices in a centralized server. Then, you’ll analyze your logs to identify harmful events. Finally, your team will troubleshoot to eliminate performance issues and security threats.

A log management tool like SolarWinds Kiwi Syslog Server NG allows you to store your syslog, SNMP and Windows events logs side-by-side, for a streamlined approach to log monitoring. With a sophisticated approach to log monitoring, you can collect historical and real-time logs from your network devices, then troubleshoot issues using an intuitive web console.

Kiwi Syslog Server NG provides interactive visuals, custom log filters, and audit report templates for HIPAA, SOX, PCI DSS, and more. For small networks and major companies alike, IT teams turn to comprehensive log monitoring software to consolidate logs from different sources, and to troubleshoot more effectively. In other words, good network management runs on log monitoring — and log monitoring tools make log monitoring more efficient and more accurate than ever.