Ingest syslog data using OpenTelemetry Collector

Recommended syslog ingestion

Stream syslog via OpenTelemetry Collector if you already collect logs with it or if a specific use case requires an additional component, for example, forwarding logs to different targets. If you want to benefit from a secure, trusted edge component with enterprise support and life-cycle management, see Syslog ingestion with ActiveGate.

If Linux system syslog observability is your main focus, we recommend deploying OneAgent, which autodiscovers host syslog data, preserves topology context, and requires minimal configuration and maintenance.

The following configuration example shows how to configure a Collector instance to receive data from syslog and send it to the Dynatrace backend.

Prerequisites

One of the following Collector distributions with the Syslog receiver:
- The Dynatrace Collector
- OpenTelemetry Contrib
- A custom Builder version
The Dynatrace API endpoint URL to which the data should be exported
An API token with the relevant access scope (only required for SaaS and ActiveGate)

Demo configuration

receivers:
  syslog/f5:
    tcp:
      listen_address: "0.0.0.0:54526"
    protocol: rfc5424
    operators:
      - type: add
        field: attributes.log.source
        value: syslog
      - type: add
        field: attributes.dt.ip_addresses
        value: "1xx.xx.xx.xx1"
      - type: add
        field: attributes.instance.name
        value: "ip-1xx-xx-x-xx9.ec2.internal"
      - type: add
        field: attributes.device.type
        value: "f5bigip"
  syslog/host:
    tcp:
      listen_address: "0.0.0.0:54527"
    protocol: rfc5424
    operators:
      - type: add
        field: attributes.log.source
        value: syslog
      - type: add
        field: attributes.device.type
        value: "ubuntu-syslog"

exporters:
  otlphttp:
    endpoint: ${env:DT_ENDPOINT}
    headers:
      Authorization: "Api-Token ${env:DT_API_TOKEN}"

service:
  pipelines:
    logs:
      receivers: [syslog/f5, syslog/host]
      processors: []
      exporters: [otlphttp]

Configuration validation

Validate your settings to avoid any configuration issues.

Components

For our configuration, we use the following components.

ReceiverS

Under receivers, we specify two instances of the syslog receiver as active receiver components for our Collector instance.

The Syslog receiver supports a number of configuration parameters, which enable you to customize its behavior. For our example, we use the following:

tcp—Specifies a TCP listener for the receiver and configures ports 54526 and 54527
protocol—Specifies the RFC 5424 implementation for our receiver (alternatively, RFC 3164 is also supported)
operators—Configures the operators we apply to each log entry. For our example, we use the add operator to add additional information.
- field—Specifies the name of value we are adding
- value—Specifies the content of the value we are adding

Exporters

Under exporters, we specify the default otlphttp exporter and configure it with our Dynatrace API URL and the required authentication token.

For this purpose, we set the following two environment variables and reference them in the configuration values for endpoint and Authorization.

DT_ENDPOINT contains the base URL of the Dynatrace API endpoint (for example, https://{your-environment-id}.live.dynatrace.com/api/v2/otlp)
DT_API_TOKEN contains the API token

Service pipelines

Under service, we eventually assemble our receiver and exporter objects into a traces pipeline, which uses the receiver instances to obtain syslog data and ingest it into Dynatrace using OTLP.

Limits and limitations

Logs are ingested using the OpenTelemetry protocol (OTLP) via the Dynatrace OTLP API and are subject to the API's limits and restrictions. For more information see:

Ingest OpenTelemetry logs