Integrate 3rd Party Log Management Service with Cloud Foundry (PCF) (2024)

As seen in previous tutorial, we learned how to create spring boot application and deplying to Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF).

Loggregator is the Cloud Foundry component used for logging, it gives stream of output logs from your application along with Cloud Foundry system components logs which communicates with your application during updates and execution.

Loggregator will stream logs to your terminal by default. If you want more than the limited amount of logging information that can be buffered by Loggregator, you can drain logs to a third-party log management service.

Here in above diagram, Log Mgr indicates any 3rd party log management services like Papertrail, Splunk etc.

We will use free log management service Papertrailapp to integrate with Cloud Foundry.

Now lets move ahead and learn step by step how to configure 3rd party log management service with Pivotal Cloud Foundry(PCF).

Create Papertrail Account

• Go to papertrailapp home page.

• Create account by clicking on Signup button and provide all details.

• Click on Add your first system.

• Papertrail provides a log destination to use with a Cloud Foundry log drain for your application. Register each app separately if you have multiple Cloud Foundry apps.
  Copy Papertrail Log destination logs5.papertrailapp.com:17805 , this would be required in coming steps when creating service with Cloud Foundry.

Set up Cloud Foundry drain

• Login to Cloud foundry from command prompt using cf login -a api.run.pivotal.io

D:\>cf login -a api.run.pivotal.io
API endpoint: api.run.pivotal.io

Email> techgeeknext@gmail.com

Password>
Authenticating...
OK

Targeted org techgeeknext-org

Select a space (or press enter to skip):
1. development
2. Production

Space> 1
Targeted space development



API endpoint:   https://api.run.pivotal.io (API version: 2.142.0)
User:           techgeeknext@gmail.com
Org:            techgeeknext-org
Space:          development

• Add the Papertrail Log destination:

  D:\>cf cups techgeeknext-logs -l syslog-tls://logs3.papertrailapp.com:17805
  Creating user provided service techgeeknext-logs in org techgeeknext-org / space development as techgeeknext@gmail.com...
  OK

• You can see the available services/application by using cf services command.

D:\>cf services
Getting services in org techgeeknext-org / space development as techgeeknext@gmail.com...

name                          service         plan     bound apps                        last operation     broker      upgrade available
techgeeknext-logs             user-provided
techgeeknextRabbitmqservice   cloudamqp       lemur    techgeeknext-springBootRabbitMq   create succeeded   appdirect

• Bind the newly created service (techgeeknext-logs) drain to the application.

  D:\>cf bind-service techgeeknext-springBootRabbitMq techgeeknext-logs
  Binding service techgeeknext-logs to app techgeeknext-springBootRabbitMq in org techgeeknext-org / space development as techgeeknext@gmail.com...
  OK
  
  TIP: Use 'cf restage techgeeknext-springBootRabbitMq' to ensure your env variable changes take effect
  

  
  Note: If you don't have any example to test in Pivotal Cloud Foundry, you can download sample example , bind it using above command and use it for testing.
• Now Restage your application to start sending log data to Papertrail. Logs start to flow automatically after a short delay.

D:\>cf restage techgeeknext-springBootRabbitMq
This action will cause app downtime.

Restaging app techgeeknext-springBootRabbitMq in org techgeeknext-org /
.............
.............
     state     since                  cpu    memory         disk           details
#0   running   2019-11-04T13:11:34Z   0.0%   125.2M of 1G   127.4M of 1G

Test

Go to papertrailapp Page and click on Events. You can see the logs coming in this log consol.