57 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
57 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
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# High Spec Logging on Low Spec Hardware
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Being a server admin with a ramen noodle budget my servers aren't super fancy
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however, I still need logging to make sure I know what's going on to fix things.
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This means that if I want logging I have to use things that are as minimal as possible.
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I've used journald logs for a while now and frankly I'm completely over reading
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non-essential[1] logs via ssh, especially when there's huge dumps of data to sift through.
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So first here are the server specs I have to work with:
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* 2 Lightsail instances: 2 Cores w/ 4GB RAM (each)
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* 3 VPS's(IONOS): 1 core w/ 2GB RAM (each)
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Between these I've got dev databases, websites, and game servers.
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The game servers are the ones I want to look at today since those produce logs
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when I'm not looking(i.e. when other people are playing/using commands on the chatbot).
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## What I use and why
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In short: [vector](https://vector.dev/) and [honeycomb](https://www.honeycomb.io/)
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I would normally go for something self-hosted and FOSS with an aggregate like honeycomb
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but honestly I just needed something that worked and honeycomb is exactly that.
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It comes with a web UI which is nice because I don't always have access
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to a terminal nor do I want to ssh into burning servers anyway.
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## Why Vector over other options
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* It's lightweight
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* Super easy to setup
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Vector is statically compiled so its a single binary(around 40 MEG). Configuration
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consists of a single config file for multiple sinks(in my case).
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* Ready to send to basically any data sink I want.
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No really look at how many sinks it supports: [ref](https://vector.dev/docs/reference/configuration/sinks/).
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I settled on honeycomb personally because its one less thing to host and because none of the logs I'm sending actually contain sensitive data so I'm not really worried about it.
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* It's easy to fan out data
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The ease of creating data sinks its trivial to take your data inputs and fan them
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out to basically anywhere to have lots of backups(not that I _really_ need it buy _heywhynot_).
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## Where I run it
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Vector lives right next to my chat-bot which people control to turn game servers
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on/off.
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I don't run vector on the websites I run are behind Nginx which hasn't failed me
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in a few months and the occasional restart seems to remedy all things.
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The Mysql database I have is literally for running tests so I'm basically staring
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at it when it does produce logs and they have entirely to do with the tests I'm running
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at the time.
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