> A syslog server is a foundational tool for centralized log management in modern IT environments
I'd very much recommend a more modern log stack than a traditional syslog server.
There are many articles covering the limitations of Syslog. Better to replace that component by utilities like OpenTelemetry and JSON structured logging.
I disagree. I work in a large environment, and rsyslog is where 90% of data goes to first. It can keep up with millions of messages per second, route them to higher order services for indexing (bigquery, splunk, elastic etc etc). Has rules engines, encryption, supports multiple protocols and obviously has TLS too. You can surely augment with otel and such where you can, but syslog is uhhhh, deployed in so many places that it would make an average app developer's head spin when all they're used to is application logging in a controlled structured place in their silo.
The problem with modern stuff is it doesn't do the very basics. Sometimes I really do want UDP dumping out into a file on another part of the network. The modern setups forget how to do this.
I saw one place that had the logs going into a database. On the same connection as the app-data. So, when the transaction failed, the logs also didn't get written. LMAO. I made them do syslog in their code, which for some of the devs was a mind-blowing. They were amazed at that we could just barf text quick&lightweight over UDP.
There's far cheaper alternatives to Splunk that are still a step up from traditional syslog.
KubeCon over the last couple of years was showing the market was a glut with Observability vendors which is just time series and log management. (traces are logs with a span id).
> A syslog server is a foundational tool for centralized log management in modern IT environments
I'd very much recommend a more modern log stack than a traditional syslog server.
There are many articles covering the limitations of Syslog. Better to replace that component by utilities like OpenTelemetry and JSON structured logging.
You can run a single binary version of Loki https://grafana.com/docs/loki/latest/get-started/deployment-...
Or use something like the Otel collector to send your logs to a remote host.
I have done my fair share of rsyslog and syslog-ng.
I would not say a "Syslog" server belongs in a modern stack.
I disagree. I work in a large environment, and rsyslog is where 90% of data goes to first. It can keep up with millions of messages per second, route them to higher order services for indexing (bigquery, splunk, elastic etc etc). Has rules engines, encryption, supports multiple protocols and obviously has TLS too. You can surely augment with otel and such where you can, but syslog is uhhhh, deployed in so many places that it would make an average app developer's head spin when all they're used to is application logging in a controlled structured place in their silo.
Even SC4S, splunk's docker appliance for turnkey syslog uses rsyslogd.
Edit: being pedantic -- it's syslog-ng actually.
The problem with modern stuff is it doesn't do the very basics. Sometimes I really do want UDP dumping out into a file on another part of the network. The modern setups forget how to do this.
I saw one place that had the logs going into a database. On the same connection as the app-data. So, when the transaction failed, the logs also didn't get written. LMAO. I made them do syslog in their code, which for some of the devs was a mind-blowing. They were amazed at that we could just barf text quick&lightweight over UDP.
Yeah, for a modern large scale distributed system both the client api and implementations are pretty bad.
An intro article on syslog servers in the year of our Lord 2026?
Did you know you can replace your noSQL db with VSAM too (honestly better than mongo).
We moved to splunk now and mostly happy with it, mix of windows/linux/etc logs.
But with AI, I can see opensource alternatives getting better.
"Splunk that runs locally with a worse UX, but on balance doesn't eat all the resources you throw at it and doesn't charge you a kidney."
There's far cheaper alternatives to Splunk that are still a step up from traditional syslog.
KubeCon over the last couple of years was showing the market was a glut with Observability vendors which is just time series and log management. (traces are logs with a span id).