Introduction

The JS7 offers the Log Management Service compliant to RFC5424, aka Syslog protocol.

• Service
  • The Log Management Service is available from JOC Cockpit within the scope of JS7 - Services.
  • The Log Management Service offers high availability: in case of fail-over or switch-over of JOC Cockpit the Log Management Service will become available from the active JOC Cockpit instance.
• Clients
  • All JS7 products, JOC Cockpit, Controller and Agents that act as a client to the Log Management Service, can be configured to report log output to the JS7 Log Management Service.
  • Log output of JS7 products is always written to local log files. In addition, log output can be forwarded to the Log Management Service.
  • Users have a choice to enable forwarding of log output per instance of a JS7 product during installation and later on by adjusting the Log4j2 configuration. 

The JS7 Log Management Service becomes available from  JOC-1828 - Getting issue details... STATUS

FEATURE AVAILABILITY STARTING FROM RELEASE 2.7.2

Log4j2 Configuration

By default the Log4j configuration of JS7 products will not make use of the Log Management Service. Instead, users choose for which instances of JS7 products they want send log output to the Log Management Service.

Controller Log4j2 Configuration

The following Log4j2 configuration is available from the log4j2.xml-example file available available with a Controller's data directory:

<Appenders>
    <Syslog name="RFC5424" format="RFC5424" host="localhost" port="4514"
            protocol="UDP" charset="UTF-8" facility="LOCAL0" newLine="false">
        <PatternLayout pattern="<134>1 %d{ISO8601}{ETC/UTC}Z ${hostName} JS7 Controller {
"host":"${hostName}",
"controllerId":"${ControllerId}",
"thread":"%t",
"level":"%p",
"logger":"%c{1}",
"message":"%enc{%m}{JSON}",
"thrown":"%enc{%throwable{10}}{JSON}"
}"
        />
    </Syslog>
</Appenders>

Explanations:

• tbd

Agent Log4j2 Configuration

The following Log4j2 configuration is available from the log4j2.xml-example file available available with a Controller's data directory:

<Appenders>
    <Syslog name="RFC5424" format="RFC5424" host="localhost" port="4514"
            protocol="UDP" charset="UTF-8" facility="LOCAL0" newLine="false">
        <PatternLayout pattern="<134>1 %d{ISO8601}{ETC/UTC}Z ${hostName} JS7 Controller {
"host":"${hostName}",
"controllerId":"${ControllerId}",
"agentId":"...",
"level":"%p",
"logger":"%c{1}",
"message":"%enc{%m}{JSON}",
"thrown":"%enc{%throwable{10}}{JSON}"
}"
        />
    </Syslog>
</Appenders>

Explanations:

• tbd

JOC Cockpit Log4j2 Configuration

The following Log4j2 configuration is available from the log4j2.xml-example file available available with a Controller's data directory:

<Appenders>
    <Syslog name="RFC5424" format="RFC5424" host="localhost" port="4514"
            protocol="UDP" charset="UTF-8" facility="LOCAL0" newLine="false">
        <PatternLayout pattern="<134>1 %d{ISO8601}{ETC/UTC}Z ${hostName} JS7 Controller {
"host":"${hostName}",
"controllerId":"${ControllerId}",
"agentId":"...",
"level":"%p",
"logger":"%c{1}",
"message":"%enc{%m}{JSON}",
"thrown":"%enc{%throwable{10}}{JSON}"
}"
        />
    </Syslog>
</Appenders>

Explanations:

• tbd

Delimitation

The JS7 Log Management Service is offered for convenience purposes as it allows to access log files of JS7 products from JOC Cockpit as a central point of view.

Due to limitations of the underlying Syslogd Protocol the JS7 Log Management Service does not meet all requirements for security, resiĺience and high availability. The Log Management Service is offered for convenience. The authoritative source of log output remains with log files created by the JS7 products.

Security

The Syslogd Protocoll does not specify authentication:

• This translates to the fact that log messages can be faked by malicious 3rd-party components as the JS7 Log Management Service cannot authenticate and reliably identify the source of log output.
• Users are warned in case that they take action based on messages arriving with the JS7 Log Management Service: severe messages that suggest immediate action should be verified from the JS7 product's log files.

The Syslogd Protocol is exposed to denial-of-service attacks:

• Flooding of messages is a possible scenario for attacks that is not covered by the Syslogd Protocol.
• The JS7 Log Management Service will identify such scenarios and will shut down. The behavior is intended to keep the JOC Cockpit that operates the Log Management Service free from DNS attacks.

Resilience

The Log Management Service accepts messages sent via the UDP protocol only.

• TCP connections are out of scope due to their blocking nature.
• UDP messages can arrive in an sequence.

The Log Management Service performs input sanitazation.

• This includes that any log messages that include for example HTML tags, will be dropped.
• Messages sent to the JS7 Log Management Service have to be compliant to the above Log4j configuration and otherwise will be dropped..

High Availability

The JS7 Log Management Service is subject to clustering of JOC Cockpit:

• This allows the service to switch from a current JOC Cockpit instance to the next active JOC Cockpit instance.
• Switching to a different host operating the then active JOC Cockpit instance includes that the hostname of the Log Management Service will change,. Users are encouraged to set up a Proxy Service that will forward log messages to the active JOC Cockpit instance.

If no JOC Cockpit instance is active, then no log messages can be picked up:

• In a situation when no JOC Cockpit instance is active UDP messages will be lost.
• Periods of unavailability of JOC Cockpit can occur in case of fail-over and switch-over that take approx. 30s but can be prolonged if a larger number of orders is present.