Large companies tend to do their logging/monitoring centrally. They have thousands of devices (computers, disk arrays, switches, routers, tape robots, etc.) and only a handful of staff to monitor. Centralization is a necessity. There are commercial products like HP Openview and Tivoli.

Central logging as another benefit: central logging implies remote logging. Remote logging means that if a machine goes haywire (or, in a hostile environment, get corrupted), it's less likely logs get wiped out.

In many places I've worked, be it as an employee or a contractor, some sort of central logging was done. From simple things as FTP'ing local logs in a nightly batch job, to thousands of machines monitored/logged with Tivoli, displaying the current status of the environment on a monitor 3 metres wide.

Personally, I'd go for central logs. If only because that means I know where to go digging for possible log file entries. But then, I look at the problem more from a sysadmin angle than a programmers' or end-users'.

Perl --((8:>*

In reply to Re: Central logging methods and thoughts by Perl Mouse
in thread Central logging methods and thoughts by bwelch

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.