What's new

Version 4.5

The following are the highlights and main changes of Logging operator 4.5. For a complete list of changes and bugfixes, see the Logging operator 4.5 releases page.

Standalone FluentdConfig and SyslogNGConfig CRDs

Starting with Logging operator version 4.5, you can either configure Fluentd in the Logging CR, or you can use a standalone FluentdConfig CR. Similarly, you can use a standalone SyslogNGConfig CRD to configure syslog-ng.

These standalone CRDs are namespaced resources that allow you to configure the Fluentd/syslog-ng aggregator in the control namespace, separately from the Logging resource. That way you can use a multi-tenant model, where tenant owners are responsible for operating their own aggregator, while the Logging resource is in control of the central operations team.

For details, see Configure Fluentd and Configure syslog-ng.

New syslog-ng features

When using syslog-ng as the log aggregator, you can now:

• Send data to OpenObserve
• Use a custom date-parser
• Create custom log metrics for sources and outputs
• Set the permitted SSL versions in HTTP based outputs
• Configure the maxConnections parameter of the sources

New Fluentd features

When using Fluentd as the log aggregator, you can now:

• Use the useragent Fluent filter
• Configure sidecar container in Fluentd pods
• Configure the security-context of every container
• Set which Azure Cloud to use (for example, AzurePublicCloud), when using the Azure Storage output
• Customize the image to use in event and host tailers

Other changes

• LoggingStatus now includes the number (problemsCount) and the related watchNamespaces to help troubleshooting

Image and dependency updates

For the list of images used in Logging operator, see Images used by Logging operator.

Version 4.4

The following are the highlights and main changes of Logging operator 4.4. For a complete list of changes and bugfixes, see the Logging operator 4.4 releases page.

New syslog-ng features

When using syslog-ng as the log aggregator, you can now use the following new outputs:

• ElasticSearch
• Grafana Loki
• MongoDB
• Redis
• Amazon S3
• Splunk HEC
• The HTTP output now supports the log-fifo-size, response-action, and timeout fields.

You can now use the metrics-probe() parser of syslog-ng in syslogNGFLow and SyslogNGClusterFlow. For details, see MetricsProbe.

Multitenancy with namespace-based routing

Logging operator now supports namespace based routing for efficient aggregator-level multi-tenancy.

In the project repository you can:

• find an overview about multitenancy.
• find more detailed information about the new LoggingRoute resource that enables this new behaviour.
• find a simple example to demonstrate the new behaviour

On a side note, nodegroup level isolation for hard multitenancy is also supported, see the Nodegroup-based multitenancy example.

Forwarder logs

Fluent-bit now doesn’t process the logs of the Fluentd and syslog-ng forwarders by default to avoid infinitely growing message loops. With this change, you can access Fluentd and syslog-ng logs simply by running kubectl logs <name-of-forwarder-pod>

In a future Logging operator version the logs of the aggregators will also be available for routing to external outputs.

Timeout-based configuration checks

Timeout-based configuration checks are different from the normal method: they start a Fluentd or syslog-ng instance without the dry-run or syntax-check flags, so output plugins or destination drivers actually try to establish connections and will fail if there are any issues , for example, with the credentials.

Add the following to you Logging resource spec:

spec:
  configCheck:
    strategy: StartWithTimeout
    timeoutSeconds: 5

Istio support

For jobs/individual pods that run to completion, Istio sidecar injection needs to be disabled, otherwise the affected pods would live forever with the running sidecar container. Configuration checkers and Fluentd drainer pods can be configured with the label sidecar.istio.io/inject set to false. You can configure Fluentd drainer labels in the Logging spec.

Improved buffer metrics

The buffer metrics are now available for both the Fluentd and the SyslogNG based aggregators.

The sidecar configuration has been rewritten to add a new metric and improve performance by avoiding unnecessary cardinality.

The name of the metric has been changed as well, but the original metric was kept in place to avoid breaking existing clients.

Metrics currently supported by the sidecar

Old

+# HELP node_buffer_size_bytes Disk space used [deprecated]
+# TYPE node_buffer_size_bytes gauge
+node_buffer_size_bytes{entity="/buffers"} 32253

New

+# HELP logging_buffer_files File count
+# TYPE logging_buffer_files gauge
+logging_buffer_files{entity="/buffers",host="all-to-file-fluentd-0"} 2
+# HELP logging_buffer_size_bytes Disk space used
+# TYPE logging_buffer_size_bytes gauge
+logging_buffer_size_bytes{entity="/buffers",host="all-to-file-fluentd-0"} 32253

Other improvements

• You can now configure the resources of the buffer metrics sidecar.
• You can now rerun failed configuration checks if there is no configcheck pod.
• The Fluentd ElasticSearch output now supports the composable index template format. To use it, set the use_legacy_template option to false.
• The metrics for the syslog-ng forwarder are now exported using axosyslog-metrics-exporter.

Image and dependency updates

For the list of images used in Logging operator, see Images used by Logging operator.

Fluentd images with versions v1.14 and v1.15 are now EOL due to the fact they are based on ruby 2.7 which is EOL as well.

The currently supported image is v1.15-ruby3 and build configuration for v1.15-staging is available for staging experimental changes.