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Enterprise Logging
;login: Enters a New Phase of Its Evolution
For over 20 years, ;login: has been a print magazine with a digital version; in the two decades previous, it was USENIX’s newsletter, UNIX News. Since its inception 45 years ago, it has served as a medium through which the USENIX community learns about useful tools, research, and events from one another. Beginning in 2021, ;login: will no longer be the formally published print magazine as we’ve known it most recently, but rather reimagined as a digital publication with increased opportunities for interactivity among authors and readers.
Since USENIX became an open access publisher of papers in 2008, ;login: has remained our only content behind a membership paywall. In keeping with our commitment to open access, all ;login: content will be open to everyone when we make this change. However, only USENIX members at the sustainer level or higher, as well as student members, will have exclusive access to the interactivity options. Rik Farrow, the current editor of the magazine, will continue to provide leadership for the overall content offered in ;login:, which will be released via our website on a regular basis throughout the year.
As we plan to launch this new format, we are forming an editorial committee of volunteers from throughout the USENIX community to curate content, meaning that this will be a formally peer-reviewed publication. This new model will increase opportunities for the community to contribute to ;login: and engage with its content. In addition to written articles, we are open to other ideas of what you might want to experience.
When the topic of logging comes up, logs are generally recognized to be useful and that having a centralized log system is “industry best practice,” and it’s even required by most regulatory oversight plans (PCI, HIPAA). But figuring out how to get started in setting up a good logging system is hard, especially if you are already a good size organization when the topic is raised. If you start off by talking to vendors, getting quotes in the seven figure range is easy. This article is an introduction to logging, outlining an inexpensive architecture that can scale up to large log volumes, and providing pointers to a few basic tools to quickly and cheaply get value out of the logs beyond just satisfying audit requirements. Future articles will dive deeper into specific aspects of logging.
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