TABLE OF CONTENTS Log files are the most critical source of data for most of your information technology systems. As such, they need to be properly managed. There are several areas to focus on when managing log files including conversion, rotation, archival, and separation. In this chapter we will be going over each of these primary areas of focus and showing you some techniques you can use to best manage your log files.
When managing log files from various systems, it quickly becomes apparent that just about every vendor of software or hardware wants to use their own format for log file data. Some log files are stored in plain text and some in binary format. Some include tab-separated data and others simply drop whatever information comes in next to the next line in the file. In order to work with all of these files, most technical professionals must learn the formats used for the log files of each application or piece of hardware that they work with regularly.
With Log Parser, there is a new way to work with log file data. Rather than dealing with several different formats of log data, Log Parser allows you to convert log file data to another format. This conversion process goes a long way to making log file data accessible to more people because you can convert the log data into a format that they are familiar with. Throughout this section, we will be going over some conversion techniques and show...
