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OVHcloud Load Balancer - TCP / HTTP / HTTPS logs forwarding

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If you would like to find out more about Logs Data Platform before reading this guide, please refer to the Logs Data Platform introduction guide.

Info

To use this feature, you must first make a refresh call via the API to the Load Balancers whose logs you want to collect. This is necessary to ensure that the logging format of the OVHcloud Load Balancer is up to date. You can use the API call below, where serviceName is the internal name of your Load Balancer, which you can find in the Load Balancer management page in the OVHcloud Control Panel or using the dedicated API call.

POST/ipLoadbalancing/{serviceName}/refresh

 

Glossary

  • Logs Data Platform: a fully managed and secured log management platform by OVHcloud. For more information, consult the Logs Data Platform service page.
  • Data Stream: a logical partition of logs that you create in an LDP account and which you will use when ingesting, viewing, or querying your logs. Multiple sources can be stored in the same data stream, and it is the unit that can be used to define a log pipeline (retention policy, archiving, live streaming, etc.), access rights, and alert policies.
  • Logs forwarding: a feature integrated into an OVHcloud product to ingest the logs of its services into a Data Stream of an LDP account in the same OVHcloud account. This feature must be activated by the customer and per service.
  • Logs forwarding Subscription: when enabling the logs forwarding for a given OVHcloud service to a given LDP Data Stream, a Subscription is created and attached to the Data Stream for further management by the customer.

 

Requirements

  • A Logs Data Platform (LDP) account with at least one active Stream configured. This guide will walk you through all the necessary steps: Quick start for Logs Data Platform.
    • If you are not familiar with all the LDP Stream configuration possibilities, simply create a new one with the default options (indexing & websocket enabled, long-term storage disabled) for this guide.
  • An up-and-running OVHcloud Load Balancer.
  • Both the LDP account and the OVHcloud Load Balancer account must belong to the same OVHcloud account.

 

Concepts & limits

Warning

NOTE: To date, the logs of the UDP listeners are not forwarded.

What are the logs of an OVHcloud Load Balancer?

The forwarded logs are generated by HAProxy (the open-source component used for load balancing).

Log content for TCP-based listeners: TCP, HTTP

Field nameDescriptionType
service_nameThe name of the Load Balancer that received the request/connectionString
date_timeThe timestamp at which the request/connection was madedatetime (with millisecond resolution), e.g. 25/Mar/2024:14:07:19.536
zoneThe OVHcloud region to which the Load Balancer belongsString
client_ipIP address of the client that initiated the TCP connection to the Load BalancerIP
client_port_intTCP port of the client that initiated the TCP connection to the Load BalancerInteger
frontend_nameName of the frontend of your Load BalancerString
frontend_ipIP address of the frontend of your Load BalancerIP
frontend_port_intTCP port of the frontend of your Load BalancerInteger
backend_nameName of the NAT source used by the Load Balancer to connect to your backend serversString
backend_source_ipSource IP address used by the Load Balancer to connect to your backend serversIP
backend_source_port_intSource port used by the Load Balancer to connect to your backend serversInteger
server_ipIP address of the backend server connected to your Load BalancerIP
server_port_intTCP port of the backend server connected to your Load BalancerInteger
termination_stateThe session termination indicator: 2 letters for TCP, 4 letters for HTTP, all the details on HAProxy documentation pageString (e.g. "----")
bytes_read_intSize (in bytes) of the response sent by the Load Balancer to the clientInteger
bytes_uploaded_intSize (in bytes) of the request sent by the client to the Load BalancerInteger
time_duration_intThe duration (in milliseconds) of the TCP session at the time the request was madeInteger

 

Additional content for HTTP listeners

Field nameDescriptionType
captured_request_headersThe headers of the HTTP request, e.g. "User-Agent"String
http_requestThe resource of the HTTP request, e.g. "/index.html"String
http_status_code_intThe returned HTTP status, e.g. "200"Integer

 

Instructions

Note that the forwarding activation is free of charge, but you will be charged for the usage of the Logs Data Platform service as per the standard price plan. For LDP pricing, refer to this page.

 

Enabling Load Balancer Log Forwarding

Via the OVHcloud Control Panel
Via the OVHcloud API

Via the OVHcloud Control Panel

From the OVHcloud Control Panel, navigate to and click on your Load Balancer service name via the Network and Load Balancer menus.

Service list - Use API logs customers

Choose the Logs tab and click the Subscribe on the right-hand side of the screen.

Use API logs customers

Select a log type and the Logs Data Platform service to which you wish to push logs.

Forward logs - Use API customers

 

How to use OVHcloud Load Balancer logs?

Now that your logs are ingested and stored in your Logs Data Platform data stream, you can query your logs and build dashboards to have a graphical representation of your logs using the web-based UI of Graylog.

  • In the OVHcloud Control Panel, retrieve the LDP username (ex: logs-xxxx) and its password in your Logs Data Platform account home page. You can refer to the Quick start guide for Logs Data Platform.
  • Open the Graylog web UI. You can retrieve the link on your account home page or using your Access point, depending on your account region (for example: Gravelines region is https://gra1.logs.ovh.com/).
  • Log in to Graylog using your Logs Data Platform Username and Password.
  • Search through your logs across the data stream of your Logs Data Platform account. You can refer to Graylog writing search queries documentation for details on search syntax.

Refer to the following documentation: Logs Data Platform - Visualizing, querying and exploiting your logs for more details about how to use your logs with Logs Data Platform, including how to:

  • setup alerts
  • view the logs in real time through a WebSocket
  • build visualization with OpenSearch Dashboards
  • integrate with OpenSearch API
  • connect with Grafana

 

How to manage your subscriptions?

At any time, you can retrieve the subscriptions attached to your Logs Data Platform data stream and choose to disable the forwarding by cancelling your subscription on your stream, so that your Logs Data Platform stream no longer receives your audit logs.

Note that this does not delete the logs stored before the subscription was cancelled, as the data stored in a log stream is immutable unless you delete the entire stream.

Via the OVHcloud Control Panel
Via the OVHcloud API

Via the OVHcloud Control Panel

To delete your subscription, simply click the Unsubscribe button to the right of your stream.

Unsubscribe forwarding - Use API logs customers

 

Go further

If you need training or technical assistance to implement our solutions, contact your sales representative or click on this link to get a quote and ask our Professional Services experts for a custom analysis of your project.