Tried to clean up the picture. This may not work since I think all extra spaces are bieing removed.
_______________
| WEBSPHERE |
| APPLICATION |
| SERVER |
---------------
|
|
|
| ??? - Don't know what is the best type of Appender/Receiver?
|
|
|
____________
| LOG SERVER |
--------------
| \
| \
|??? - Don't know what is the best type of Appender/Receiver?
| \
______________\__________
| Chainsaw | | Chainsaw |
| client | | client |
-------------------------
Thank you,
Giancarlo V. Martinez
11501 Burnet Rd 902-4, B-020
Austin TX, 78758
Office: (512)-838-9489; T/L 678-9489; Fax: (512)-823-0035
Giancarlo V Martinez/Austin/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
02/27/2006 04:05 PM
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|
Scott thank you for your reply. I decided to use a picture to best describe what we are trying to do and why.
Basically we want our development team to be able to view the logging of any machine in our environment from a remote location, that is why we want to use Chainsaw. We also want to be able to view the logging of our Oracle Stored Procedures, which gets logged to the DB in the above image. Also, since Log4J 1.3 is still in alpha, the dev lead does not feel comfortable utilizing it, he would prefer we use 1.2.x.
We do not know which would be the best way to setup this kind of environment. What should we use for all the question marks (???), so that events can be viewed from any client, for any server. Saw your three choices but which one would be the best?
The reason why we came up with the above architecture is that, we are in a very secured area, with very strict firewall rules. To be able to connect to WAS, the network admin has to open op a port on each machine for each client which may connect to it. It would be impossible for us to know all the Chainsaw clients which may want to connect to WAS, so we thought a middle-man, the "Log Server" would be our best bet. We thought, as stated in my previous note, we could have an appender/receiver connection from WAS to the Log Server, this connection would also be active, so that would handle the issue of event history.
Correct me if I am wrong, but if the connection is always active then no events should be lost, correct? What would be the best way for multiple Chainsaw Clients to view the events from multiple WebSphere Servers?
Second, the DBA does not want us to use log4j on the Logging DB. He does not want an instance of Java running on that machine. What would be the best way for Chainsaw clients to view the events of the Stored Procedures, could we also route those requests through the Log Server? I know Log4PLSQL is not in the domain of this forum, but if you could nudge us in the right direction it would be great.
For the record I am very new to log4J and chainsaw so some of your responses I could not follow. What did you mean by " -blocking- network-based appenders"? How can the App Server be "blocked"?
Also I didn't understand this sentence, "The Chainsaw config can be managed by IT and accessed via URL, so if you use log files, it doesn't matter where they are because everyone uses a single configuration file to access the logs", how would chainsaw view these files, via ssh? I don't think would work however due to our network constraints.
Thank you so much for your help,
Giancarlo V. Martinez
11501 Burnet Rd 902-4, B-020
Austin TX, 78758
Office: (512)-838-9489; T/L 678-9489; Fax: (512)-823-0035
"Scott Deboy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
02/27/2006 10:49 AM
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|
Do you need event history? (events created prior to when you started Chainsaw)? If so, that leaves out the socket-based appenders (at least in 1.2.x).
SocketHubAppender and SocketHubReceiver are not a bad way to go if you don't need event history, but I wouldn't use -blocking- network-based appenders in a server app. Even wrapping them in AsyncAppender isn't sufficient to prevent possible blocking of the app server if Chainsaw is on a slow link (at least in log4j 1.2.x).
Assuming you're using log4j 1.2.x in the server environment, I'd use one of these combinations:
- FileAppender and LogFilePatternReceiver or VFSLogFilePatternReceiver (if over ssh)
- JMSAppender and custom code to write the events to a database and CustomSQLDBReceiver
- JDBCAppender (http://www.dankomannhaupt.de/projects/) and CustomSQLDBReceiver
The Chainsaw config can be managed by IT and accessed via URL, so if you use log files, it doesn't matter where they are because everyone uses a single configuration file to access the logs (no real need for a centralized server to get the same effect).
When you can use log4j 1.3 in your environment on the appender-side, you could use:
- DBAppender and DBReceiver (if you don't mind using log4j's schema for logging events)
- An enhancement to SocketHubAppender that allows you to specify the number of events that are buffered - the buffered events are provided to new SocketHubReceiver clients
- Two -nonblocking- network appenders and receivers: UDPAppender/Receiver and MulticastAppender/Receiver
Log files are probably the best way to go for now - and the latest version of VFSLogFilePatternReceiver will allow you to access logs accessible via ssh without you having to embed the username/password in the config file (the next update to Chainsaw will support a GUI login window for VFSLogFilePatternReceiver).
I hope this helps, feel free to ask more questions.
Scott Deboy
COMOTIV SYSTEMS
111 SW Columbia Street Ste. 950
Portland, OR 97201
Telephone: 503.224.7496
Cell: 503.997.1367
Fax: 503.222.0185
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.comotivsystems.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Giancarlo V Martinez [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Mon 2/27/2006 7:43 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Question about having a distributed log4j/Chainsaw environment, receiver/appender combo
I have been asked by my company if it is possible to setup a distributed
environment for log4j and Chainsaw, in which all of our application servers
would be logging to one "Log Server", and multiple Chainsaw clients would
connect to the "Log Server". That way any user can connect to a central
server and view the logging of all the application servers.
I did some research and I think I need to setup the following environment:
- A SocketAppender on each of the Application Servers
- A SocketReciever on the "Log Server" for each appender/receiver combo
- A SocketHubAppender on the "Log Server" so that multiple chainsaw clients
can connect
- A SocketHubReceiver for each of the Chainsaw clients.
I was wondering if this was even possible, to have logging messages routed
through a server with a SocketReceiver/SocketHubAppender Combination, and
if so how would I set this up? I could I get the two interfaces to
communicate with each other?
Thank you,
Giancarlo V. Martinez
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