Enabling High Availability and Scalability for Log Insight
vCenter Log Insight Manager makes troubleshooting across physical, virtual and cloud environments easier with universal log collection, powerful analytics, enterprise scalability and ease of deployment. Support for any syslog-compatible device and tight integration with other vCenter and vSphere technologies equips Virtual Infrastructure (VI) admins with the most complete view of their data center operations.
VMware vCenter® Log Insight Manager™ delivers real-time log management and analysis with machine learning-based Intelligent Grouping, high performance search and better troubleshooting across physical, virtual and cloud environments correlating performance events and system log entries and bringing log search and utilization tasks from hours to minutes.
Version 2.0 of Log Insight introduced scale out architecture which supports grouping up to 6 nodes into a unified cluster capable of ingesting syslog messages sent using TCP, UDP, SSL and API. In this architecture, an external application load balancer serves as a central aggregation point for all client connections, monitoring the health of the nodes and distributing traffic. An inherent challenge that arises when syslog messages are sent using methods other than UDP is that clients often use long-lived connections to send many messages. Available load balancers on the market typically amplify this challenge by keeping individual client connections directed to the same target node. This results in imbalanced message distribution and sub-optimal utilization of the available Log Insight resources. KEMP Technologies, the leader in application-centric load balancing, has addressed these challenges.
Optimized Traffic Handling
vCenter Log Insight management software provides customers with a variety of options for sending logs for collection and analysis. However, load balancers that are not aware of the makeup of syslog traffic and message structure at an application level do not have the visibility to ensure proper distribution of messages across a Log Insight cluster and optimized availability. KEMP’s LoadMaster application load balancer provides specialized Log Insight services that enable intelligent L7 traffic distribution across Log Insight deployments.
Solution Benefits:
KEMP Technologies LoadMaster™ is an advanced L4-7 content switching application delivery controller that enables high availability of applications, SSL offload, content switching and intelligent global traffic distribution to direct client requests to the best endpoint across cloud boundaries based on proximity or pre-defined business logic.
- Compatibility with multiple syslog transport methods makes LoadMaster a comprehensive solution to support Log Insight traffic distribution.
- Simplified scalability and high availability are achieved by directing all clients to a single aggregation point.
- End-to-end management is enabled through LoadMaster by allowing administrators to gracefully introduce or remove Log Insight nodes.
- Increased uptime is made possible through health monitoring, removal of failed systems and automatic reactivation after health is restored.
VMware Validated Solution for Log Insight Deployments
Use Cases
Multi-Node Availability
LoadMaster is the only ADC available that comprehensively supports highly available traffic distribution for all supported Log Insight message ingestion methods.
Maintenance Windows
With LoadMaster serving as a central aggregation point for client connections, maintenance can be performed on the Log Insight infrastructure without impact.
Scale Out
Starting in version 2.0, Log Insight provides enhanced scale out capabilities. LoadMaster removes the need to make updates to individual clients as new cluster members are added.
KEMP is an industry leader in software-based L4-7 application delivery technology and has maintained a laser focus on providing availability and performance for workloads in virtualized and hybrid cloud environments. This strategy, along with broad integration with VMware technologies has made VLM the virtual ADC of choice in over 11,000 virtualized private cloud customer deployments to date. KEMP’s VMware-validated solution for Log Insight further extends these capabilities and supports increased infrastructure operational visibility.
How It Works
Connections are made by clients to LoadMaster to start communication using a variety of protocols. As individual syslog messages are received, LoadMaster uses its L7 visibility to parse the flows on a per message basis and ensure even distribution across the cluster of available nodes, even when members are removed or added. LoadMaster executes health checks against the nodes to ensure that only healthy nodes are used as targets for messages. If a node becomes unhealthy and starts to fail health checks, it is automatically removed and re-added only when it returns to a healthy state.
