Step 7: Configure Source to Send Your Data

This week we’re in Step 7 (of 12) Click here to play.
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Tell how you configured your source. What language did you use to build your template or rules?
What more would you like to learn about source configuration? Be specific.

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TO play, respond to this post with your response to this week’s questions.

My source configuration for sending logs to graylog depends of type of device:

  1. Network devices:
    I’ve setup syslog forwarding according to manufacturer’s official docs. Or use uncle google for help.

    Here are some manuals how to setup external syslog for different manufacturers:

  1. Linux devices:
    You usually use rsyslog as it’s most used syslog daemon on linux systems. If you can, always use RFC 5424 syslog format, as it contains correct timezone definition, so time is correctly detected by graylog.
  1. Windows devices
    For Windows you have more options, I’ve always used sidecar, because is much more easier to configure templates centrally, than manually on every host.

Tips to success:

  • Always setup correct time and date synchronization using NTP on source device
  • Always setup correct timezone, use either local timezone, or UTC
  • Check your firewall to allow connection from device to graylog server, specific port and protocol
  • Think and configure graylog input and index before sending logs from devices
  • For testing purposes I would suggest to create dummy index and input with low retention to test new type of devices.
  • Don’t try to send new messages to production indexes (inputs), if you you are on POC and testing phase. You can end up with unnecessary fields which is not possible to remove.
3 Likes

Awesome. Thanks for participating!

Hi, Shoothub,

Thanks for sending this along. Do you want to include it with your interview article? I think this would be awesome, too, as a stand-alone entry in the community. What are your thoughts?