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About Logging - Logging | Observability | OpenShift Container Platform 4.16
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About Logging

As a cluster administrator, you can deploy logging on an OpenShift Container Platform cluster, and use it to collect and aggregate node system audit logs, application container logs, and infrastructure logs. You can forward logs to your chosen log outputs, including on-cluster, Red Hat managed log storage. You can also visualize your log data in the OpenShift Container Platform web console, or the Kibana web console, depending on your deployed log storage solution.

In OpenShift Container Platform 4.16, the Elasticsearch Operator is only supported for ServiceMesh, Tracing, and Kiali. This Operator is planned for removal from the OpenShift Operator Catalog in November 2025. The reason for removal is that the Elasticsearch Operator is no longer supported for log storage, and Kibana is no longer supported in OpenShift Container Platform 4.16 and later versions. For more information on lifecycle dates, see Platform Agnostic Operators.

OpenShift Container Platform cluster administrators can deploy logging by using Operators. For information, see Installing logging.

The Operators are responsible for deploying, upgrading, and maintaining logging. After the Operators are installed, you can create a ClusterLogging custom resource (CR) to schedule logging pods and other resources necessary to support logging. You can also create a ClusterLogForwarder CR to specify which logs are collected, how they are transformed, and where they are forwarded to.

Because the internal OpenShift Container Platform Elasticsearch log store does not provide secure storage for audit logs, audit logs are not stored in the internal Elasticsearch instance by default. If you want to send the audit logs to the default internal Elasticsearch log store, for example to view the audit logs in Kibana, you must use the Log Forwarding API as described in Forward audit logs to the log store.

Logging architecture

The major components of the logging are:

Collector

The collector is a daemonset that deploys pods to each OpenShift Container Platform node. It collects log data from each node, transforms the data, and forwards it to configured outputs. You can use the Vector collector or the legacy Fluentd collector.

Fluentd is deprecated and is planned to be removed in a future release. Red Hat provides bug fixes and support for this feature during the current release lifecycle, but this feature no longer receives enhancements. As an alternative to Fluentd, you can use Vector instead.
Log store

The log store stores log data for analysis and is the default output for the log forwarder. You can use the default LokiStack log store, the legacy Elasticsearch log store, or forward logs to additional external log stores.

The Logging 5.9 release does not contain an updated version of the OpenShift Elasticsearch Operator. If you currently use the OpenShift Elasticsearch Operator released with Logging 5.8, it will continue to work with Logging until the EOL of Logging 5.8. As an alternative to using the OpenShift Elasticsearch Operator to manage the default log storage, you can use the Loki Operator. For more information on the Logging lifecycle dates, see Platform Agnostic Operators.
Visualization

You can use a UI component to view a visual representation of your log data. The UI provides a graphical interface to search, query, and view stored logs. The OpenShift Container Platform web console UI is provided by enabling the OpenShift Container Platform console plugin.

The Kibana web console is now deprecated is planned to be removed in a future logging release.

Logging collects container logs and node logs. These are categorized into types:

Application logs

Container logs generated by user applications running in the cluster, except infrastructure container applications.

Infrastructure logs

Container logs generated by infrastructure namespaces: openshift*, kube*, or default, as well as journald messages from nodes.

Audit logs

Logs generated by auditd, the node audit system, which are stored in the /var/log/audit/audit.log file, and logs from the auditd, kube-apiserver, openshift-apiserver services, as well as the ovn project if enabled.

Additional resources

About deploying logging

Administrators can deploy the logging by using the OpenShift Container Platform web console or the OpenShift CLI (oc) to install the logging Operators. The Operators are responsible for deploying, upgrading, and maintaining the logging.

Administrators and application developers can view the logs of the projects for which they have view access.

Logging custom resources

You can configure your logging deployment with custom resource (CR) YAML files implemented by each Operator.

Red Hat OpenShift Logging Operator:

  • ClusterLogging (CL) - After the Operators are installed, you create a ClusterLogging custom resource (CR) to schedule logging pods and other resources necessary to support the logging. The ClusterLogging CR deploys the collector and forwarder, which currently are both implemented by a daemonset running on each node. The Red Hat OpenShift Logging Operator watches the ClusterLogging CR and adjusts the logging deployment accordingly.

  • ClusterLogForwarder (CLF) - Generates collector configuration to forward logs per user configuration.

Loki Operator:

  • LokiStack - Controls the Loki cluster as log store and the web proxy with OpenShift Container Platform authentication integration to enforce multi-tenancy.

OpenShift Elasticsearch Operator:

These CRs are generated and managed by the OpenShift Elasticsearch Operator. Manual changes cannot be made without being overwritten by the Operator.

  • ElasticSearch - Configure and deploy an Elasticsearch instance as the default log store.

  • Kibana - Configure and deploy Kibana instance to search, query and view logs.

About JSON OpenShift Container Platform Logging

You can use JSON logging to configure the Log Forwarding API to parse JSON strings into a structured object. You can perform the following tasks:

  • Parse JSON logs

  • Configure JSON log data for Elasticsearch

  • Forward JSON logs to the Elasticsearch log store

About collecting and storing Kubernetes events

The OpenShift Container Platform Event router is a pod that watches Kubernetes events and logs them for collection by OpenShift Container Platform Logging. You must manually deploy the Event router.

For information, see About collecting and storing Kubernetes events.

About troubleshooting OpenShift Container Platform Logging

You can troubleshoot the logging issues by performing the following tasks:

  • Viewing logging status

  • Viewing the status of the log store

  • Understanding logging alerts

  • Collecting logging data for Red Hat Support

  • Troubleshooting for critical alerts

About exporting fields

The logging system exports fields. Exported fields are present in the log records and are available for searching from Elasticsearch and Kibana.

For information, see About exporting fields.

About event routing

The Event router is a pod that watches OpenShift Container Platform events so they can be collected by logging. The Event router collects events from all projects and writes them to STDOUT. Fluentd collects those events and forwards them into the OpenShift Container Platform Elasticsearch instance. Elasticsearch indexes the events to the infra index.

You must manually deploy the Event router.

For information, see Collecting and storing Kubernetes events.