By default, Dynatrace automatically discovers and analyzes new log files, and stores them if selected for ingestion based on log ingest rules. For trial users, everything is already set up, allowing you to start analyzing logs immediately without additional configuration.
Dynatrace automatically discovers all new log files that meet the requirements described below.
Dynatrace automatically discovers, analyzes, and stores (if selected for ingestion) logs every 60 seconds.
Whether your autodiscovered files are stored in Dynatrace depends on the log ingest rules.
By default, the OneAgent log module autodiscovers the following categories of log files:
System logs
On Windows:
Windows Security LogWindows Application LogWindows System LogOn Linux:
/var/log/messages/var/log/syslogLog files opened by running processes. For details, see Log autodiscovery requirements
IIS Logs (Windows only) - both event logs and plain log files
Container logs (Linux only) in Kubernetes, Openshift, and non-instrumented Docker. For details, see Log Monitoring in Kubernetes
z/OS logs. For details, see Monitor z/OS logs
If your logs are not ingested, it can be either because the OneAgent Log Enablement is disabled, or because the logs breach a rule concerning OneAgent Log Security.
For Windows event logs, Log Monitoring detects the following fields and sends them as custom attributes:
Semantic attribute name
Event property
winlog.keywords
Event.RenderingInfo.Keywords
winlog.username
Event.System.Security.<xmlattr>.UserID
winlog.level
Event.RenderingInfo.Level
winlog.eventid
Event.System.EventID
winlog.provider
Event.System.Provider.<xmlattr>.Name
winlog.task
Event.System.Task
winlog.opcode
Event.RenderingInfo.Opcode
A log file must meet all of the following requirements in order to be autodiscovered:
The log file must be kept open by an important process.
The log file must exist for a minimum of one minute.
Files with an unsupported timestamp are automatically timestamped with the time the file was read.
The logs must have a supported character encoding. By default, the supported encoding is UTF-8. Other supported types include UTF-8 BOM and, if the files contain the byte-order mark (BOM), UTF-16LE and UTF-16BE.
Binary log files are not detected automatically. You can use custom log sources with Allow binary format option set to ingest Binary log files.
The log file must be at least 0.5 KB in size.
The log file must have been updated (written to) in the last 7 days.
Log files that have not been updated in the past 7 days while Log Monitoring is active will not be visible on dashboards.
The log file must be in the actual log or logs folder or in its subfolders:
c:\log\log_file.txtc:\logs\NewFolder\log_file.txtc:\log\NewFolder\NewFolder\log_file.txtor the log filename must contain a log string preceded or followed by the period (.) or underscore (_) character:
c:\NewFolder\abc.logc:\NewFolder\0865842.log.txtc:\NewFolder\logfile.txtLog files are ingested only if their timestamp is within the last 24 hours. See Log Management and Analytics default limits for more details.
Log entries with timestamps more than 10 minutes ahead of the current time are overridden. See Log Management and Analytics default limits for more details.
If you don't want Dynatrace to automatically discover new log files on a specific monitored host, you can turn off log autodiscovery.
See Configuration scopes to learn about configurations on the tenant, host group, and host.
In the tenant, follow the steps below.
Tenant-side configuration is the preferred approach for managing autodetection. However, in specific use cases, the host-side configuration below is considered an option.
/var/lib/dynatrace/oneagent/agent/config/ruxitagentloganalytics.conf%PROGRAMDATA%\dynatrace\oneagent\agent\config\ruxitagentloganalytics.confAppLogAutoDetection = falseOneAgent restart is not required.
Log files in OneAgent:
In standard environments, OneAgent log module supports up to 100 files in one directory with logs, 1 GB of initial log content (when OneAgent log module runs for the first time), and 10 MB of new log content per minute. If you have more data, especially a higher level of magnitude, there is a high chance OneAgent log module will support it as well, but we advise you to contact support to review your setup beforehand.
In special cases, such as very poor hardware performance, the OneAgent log module's limitations might be more strict.
The autodetector has the following additional built-in rules:
/Log/\*xel/commitlog/CommitLog\*log/CCM/Logs/\* /MSSQL/Log/\*trc /*MSSQL*/OLAP/Log/\*trcMSSQL/DATA/\*ldf \*evtx/var/log/pods/\*/var/lib/docker/containers/\*/*\[-.*]log\[-.*]*/\*\[-.\_]log /catalina.out\*/log/\*/log/*/\*/logs/\*/logs/*/\*^/var/log/**/\*The custom security rules can only narrow auto-detection but not expand it.
Each custom log source path you add needs to be validated by OneAgent and abide by its security rules (file matching rules). The following security rules are applied on the OneAgent side.
Security rules can't be used to expand the autodetector to detect more files. You can only use them to limit the detection of files. If you need to include a log source that isn't automatically detected, use a custom log source configuration.
See Security rules to learn how to configure security rules for custom log sources to ensure data protection.