Measuring and Logging Everything in Real Time

Do you know what is happening in your web application right now, this second, how many requests, logins, exceptions you have, how many and what data your users are generating and what the click through rate of each of your registration step is? Or do you know exactly which exception with which stack trace caused the error your users are seeing? If not, this talk will show how you can easily measure and log everything that happens in your application with the help of open source tools, such as Graphite, StatsD, Graylog2 and Logstash, without influencing your production environment.

Dutch PHP Conference 2013

Transcript

1. Measuring and Logging
   Everything in Real-Time
   @BastianHofmann
   As the title says in the next hour we are going to talk about two very important aspects of
   any web application that are often overlooked in the beginning:
   

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2. Logging
   1st is logging, so that you actually now, what's happening in your application if you have to
   track down an error
   

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3. Measuring
   And 2nd is measuring and monitoring constantly how your application is behaving
   

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4. Many roads
   Of course as with many things there are many roads to accomplish that and many tools
   available, that help you with it. i'll not going to show you all of them, but just what we ended
   up using at ResearchGate. They work great for us, but depending on your use cases other
   tools may be more suited to your needs. The important thing to get out of this talk: take care
   of it
   

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5. A few words
   about me
   before that ...
   

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6. i work at researchgate, the social network for scientists and researchers
   

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7. ResearchGate gives
   science back to the
   people who make it
   happen.
   We help researchers
   build reputation and
   accelerate scientific
   progress.
   On their terms.
   ‟
   the goal is to give...
   

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8. over 2.9 million users
   

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9. here some impressions of the page
   

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11. http://gigaom.com/2013/06/05/heres-how-bill-gatess-
    researchgate-investment-might-change-the-world-for-the-
    better
    http://venturevillage.eu/researchgate
    

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12. have this, and also work on some cool stuff
    

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14. in addition to this i also speak frequently on conferences throughout the world
    

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15. work and live in berlin
    

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16. Questions? Ask
    by the way, if you have any questions throughout this talk, if you don't understand
    something, just raise your hand and ask. probably my fault anyways since i spoke to quickly
    or my accent was too bad
    

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17. Logging
    So 1st: Logging
    

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18. For when
    something goes
    wrong
    

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19. server
    error log
    access log
    debug logs
    slow query log
    ...
    Let's start with a simple setup: we have one server with an apache and some database on it.
    Of course all of these services are writing logs somewhere
    

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20. $ ssh my_simple_server
    getting at these is very simple, just ssh into the server
    

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21. $ tail -f error.log
    $ cat error.log | grep Exception
    and use your favorite unix command line tools to view the logs
    

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22. Error Logs
    Let's look at the application related logs a bit more closely, for example the ... as it says,
    Apache and PHP log all errors that happen in your application there
    

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23. ErrorLog /var/logs/apache/error.log
    The location is specified in your Apache configuration somewhere like this
    

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24. php.ini
    •error_reporting
    •display_errors
    •display_startup_errors
    •log_errors
    •error_log
    And there are some ini settings in PHP for configuring how errors should be handled, just
    read up on them in the documentation
    

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25. callable set_exception_handler(
    callable $exception_handler
    );
    Since you probably don't want to display an exception to the user (or a blank page) but a nice
    error page, you should set a custom exception handler in your application
    

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26. callable set_error_handler(
    callable $error_handler
    [, int $error_types = E_ALL |
    E_STRICT ]
    );
    and while you are at it, also set a custom error_handler, hey it's PHP
    

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27. bool error_log ( string $message [, int
    $message_type = 0 [, string $destination [, string
    $extra_headers ]]] )
    You can then log to the apache error log with the error_log function
    

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28. and the user can get then such a nice error page, looking at this screenshot: first you may
    notice is the http response code displayed there
    

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29. HTTP Response
    Codes
    http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-
    sec6.html
    Please read up on it and choose correct ones for your application. helps you greatly with
    filtering the important stuff from the unimportant later on: a 503 may be much more serious
    then a 404
    

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30. on the screenshot here you also see some additional codes and ids displayed that help to
    identify the error in your system later on
    

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31. Log additional info
    of course you should not only display this information but also write it to your log files, you
    can easily do this in your custom error handler, and if you need to find the error that resulted
    in this error page you can just grep for the error code
    

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32. Not only error
    codes
    

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33. Request
    Information
    

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34. But what about
    fatal errors
    A bit earlier I said, you should actually write your own error handler to catch them show an
    error page and add custom information to the error logs, but what about fatal error, the php
    script is aborted then
    

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35. Use error_get_last()
    in a Shutdown
    Handler
    http://php.net/manual/en/function.error-
    get-last.php
    

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36. Access Logs
    Another important log is the access log, which logs each incoming request
    

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37. 192.168.56.1 - - [09/Jul/2012:19:18:19
    +0200] "GET /rg_trunk/webroot/c/af10c/
    images/template/rg_logo_default.png HTTP/
    1.1" 200 882 "http://devm/rg_trunk/webroot/
    directory/publications/"
    this is what it usually looks like
    

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38. LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b" custom
    CustomLog /var/logs/apache/access.log custom
    http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/
    mod_log_config.html#logformat
    and you configure it in apache like this, there is already lots of information from the request
    you can put in there, like url, response code, request time etc
    

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39. http://de.php.net/apache_note
    string apache_note (
    string $note_name
    [, string $note_value = "" ]
    )
    but with the apache_note function you can add additional information from your application.
    by the way this is of course also possible with nginx, there you just set some response
    headers in php, in nginx you can then access these upstream headers, log them, and then
    filter them out so the clients don't get them
    

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40. LogFormat "...\"%{referer}i\" \"%{user-
    agent}i\" %{session_id}n %{account_id}n..."
    custom
    but back to apache: these notes then can be referenced in your log format like this
    

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41. Debug Logs
    next log type that your application can write are plain debug logs that are not related to
    errors
    

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42. https://github.com/Seldaek/monolog/
    a good library recommendation for doing this instead of writing to a file manually is monolog
    

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43. use Monolog\Logger;
    use Monolog\Handler\StreamHandler;
    // create a log channel
    $log = new Logger('name');
    $log->pushHandler(
    new StreamHandler(
    'path/to/your.log', Logger::WARNING
    )
    );
    // add records to the log
    $log->addWarning('Foo');
    $log->addError('Bar');
    

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44. Handlers
    •Stream
    •Mail
    •FirePHP
    •ChromePHP
    •Socket
    •Roating File
    •MongoDB
    •Syslog
    •Gelf
    •Null
    •Test
    •FingersCrossed
    nice thing is: it supports multiple handlers out of the box, to log wherever you need it,
    especially useful: the fingers crossed handler: you just put your logs in this handler but it
    does not log them directly to a file, only when a certain condition was met, like a threshold all
    already written logs and all further logs are written to a file
    

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45. Log in a structured
    way
    one thing that can help you greatly with managing huge amount of logs with lot's of different
    additional information in it is logging in a structured way (not only for debug but also for
    error logs)
    

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46. JSON
    http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4627.txt
    in my opinion a good format is json, since it is still human readable
    

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47. use Monolog\Logger;
    use Monolog\Handler\StreamHandler;
    use Monolog\Formatter\JsonFormatter;
    $log = new Logger('name');
    $handler = new StreamHandler(
    'path/to/your.log', Logger::WARNING
    );
    $handler->setFormatter(new JsonFormatter());
    $log->pushHandler($handler);
    in monolog you can just set a formatter for this
    

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48. Logs from other
    services
    but of course your application probably is a bit more complex, soa anyone? so you have also
    other services somewhere logging something
    

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49. web server http service
    http service
    http service
    http service
    user request
    log
    log
    log
    log
    log
    the setup may look like this, a request comes to a webserver and your php application on
    there calls other services. each of them have their own logs. for example the http service
    there. now if an error happens in the http service we are probably going to display an error as
    well in our php app. but how can we identify then which exception on the http service lead to
    the displayed error on the web server?
    

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50. Correlation /
    Tracing ID
    a nice way of doing this in a generlized, non-custom way is by using a common correlation
    or tracing id
    

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51. web server http service
    http service
    http service
    http service
    create
    unique
    trace_id for
    request
    user request
    trace_id
    trace_id
    trace_id
    trace_id
    log
    log
    log
    log
    log
    so when the user request first hits your system you generate a unique trace_id for this
    request and you then pass this to all underlying services through an http header.
    

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52. X-Trace-Id: bbr8ehb984tbab894
    

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53. web server http service
    http service
    http service
    http service
    create
    unique
    trace_id for
    request
    user request
    trace_id
    trace_id
    trace_id
    trace_id
    log
    log
    log
    log
    log
    everyone then puts these tracing id in every logs they write. so if you have a tracing id you
    can easily find all logs for this request by just greping for the trace_id
    

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54. but... usually your application does not look like this
    

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55. but more like this: you have multiple servers lying around
    

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56. which means ssh-ing into all of these servers (dsh...) and then grepping for information over
    multiple logs (access log, error log, debug logs, ...) can become quite tedious and time
    consuming
    

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57. Aggregate the logs
    in a central place
    so to make it easier: work on a central log management and ...
    

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58. Make them easily
    full-text searchable
    also ...
    

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59. Make them
    aggregate-able
    and make different kind of logs aggregateable
    

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60. Always Log to file
    but whatever you do and whatever we are going to talk about...
    

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61. Seriously...
    

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62. Always Log to file
    because this is your backup when your central log management solution will fail (network
    errors, etc). and i'll guarantee you, it will fail sometime, probably at the worst moment
    

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63. Directly to a
    database
    first naive approach to central log management is to log directly from you application to a
    database (you saw the mongoDbHandler from Monolog)
    

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64. webserver webserver webserver
    DB
    setup would look like this: everything in one place, easily searchable, great, finished
    

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65. Disadvantages
    not quite, it has some disadvantages
    

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66. Database is down?
    what happens if
    

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67. Database is slow?
    

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68. Database is full?
    

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69. How to integrate
    access logs?
    

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70. Influences
    application
    performance
    because of all the database queries you are doing, and chances are if there are problems on
    your platform and multiple errors are occurring, directly writing to a database will make your
    problems worse
    

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71. Frontend?
    also there is still no frontend to easily search and monitor exceptions, of course there are sql
    clients, phpmyadmin, rockmongo etc, but they are multi purpose tools and not really made
    for displaying and filtering logs
    

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72. Better solutions?
    are there ...
    

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73. graylog2
    http://graylog2.org/
    on tool that I quite like for this is called graylog2
    

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74. Full text search
    it comes out of the box with a very nice interface to do...
    

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75. Structured
    Messages
    in ...
    

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76. Metrics & Alarms
    and offers metrics, alarms on your logs
    

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77. that's what the interface looks like, you'll see this in action in a minute
    

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78. https://github.com/bashofmann/
    vm_graylog2_amqp_logstash_apache
    

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79. Graylog2
    UDP GELF Messages
    elasticsearch
    webserver webserver webserver
    the easiest approach is to just send the messages in a special format (gelf, supported by a
    monolog handler) with a upd request from your app servers to graylog which stores them in
    elasticsearch. udp is quite nice since it is fire and forget, so it does not influence our
    application too much (if you reuse connections and don't create a new one for each log)
    

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80. {
    "version": "1.0",
    "host": "www1",
    "short_message": "Short message",
    "full_message": "Backtrace here\n
    \nmore stuff",
    "timestamp": 1291899928.412,
    "level": 1,
    "facility": "payment-backend",
    "file": "/var/www/somefile.rb",
    "line": 356,
    "_user_id": 42,
    "_something_else": "foo"
    }
    a typical graylog gelf message looks like this, some default fields, and user specific fields
    prepended with an underscore
    

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81. Disadvantages
    but ...
    

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82. Graylog/
    elasticsearch is
    down?
    still if graylog/es is down you are using logs
    

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83. Graylog/
    elasticsearch is full?
    

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84. Packet loss
    udp has the disadvantage that because of network errors your logs possibly don't arrive
    

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85. Graylog2
    elasticsearch
    webserver webserver webserver
    AMQP
    GELF GELF
    GELF
    GELF
    better approach, put a queue in between, also good for load balancing
    

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86. Don't influence your
    application by
    logging
    but still if you push something in a queue you are still influencing your production system
    unnecessarily
    

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87. Always Log to file
    and remember you should log to file anyways
    

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88. logstash
    http://logstash.net/
    enter the next tool we are using, logstash is a very powerful tool to handle log processing
    

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89. input filter output
    basic workflow is that you have some input where logstash gets log messages in, on this
    input you can execute multiple filters that modify the message and then you can output the
    filtered message somewhere
    

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90. Very rich plugin
    system
    to do this it offers a very large and rich plugin system for all kinds of inputs, filters and
    outputs, and you can also write your own
    

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91. Graylog2
    elasticsearch
    webserver webserver webserver
    AMQP
    log log log
    logstash logstash logstash
    so our setup would look like this, logstash instances on each app server take the local log
    files, parse and filter them and send them to the queue
    

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92. input {
    file {
    type => "error"
    path =>
    [ "/var/logs/php/*.log" ]
    add_field =>
    [ "severity", "error" ]
    }
    file {
    type => "access"
    path =>
    [ "/var/logs/apache/*_access.log" ]
    add_field =>
    [ "severity", "info" ]
    }
    }
    input configuration
    

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93. filter{
    grok {
    match => ["@source",
    "\/%{USERNAME:facility}\.log$"]
    }
    grok {
    type => "access"
    pattern => "^%{IP:OriginalIp}
    \s[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+\s[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+\s\[.*?
    \]\s\"%{DATA:Request}..."
    }
    }
    filter configuration
    

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94. output {
    amqp {
    host => "amqp.host"
    exchange_type => "fanout"
    name => "logs"
    }
    }
    output configuration
    

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95. Measuring
    now that you have all the log messages in a central, searchable, aggregateable place: lets go
    to measuring
    

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96. For knowing what
    happens
    so that you know what actually happens in your application and in your system
    

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97. Technical Metrics
    and with that i mean technical metrics like load on your servers, available memory, requests,
    exceptions, response times (a bit more on that later)
    

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98. Business Metrics
    but also and probably even more important, business metrics
    

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99. Define your KPIs
    or so called key performance indicators, example: signups, profile views, messages, uploaded
    images, average volume per sale, ... it really depends on your application
    

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100. Graphite
     http://graphite.wikidot.com/
     again there are many tools available to collect and display these metrics: one i want to
     highlight is graphite
     

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101. webserver webserver webserver
     graphite
     UDP
     easiest way to use it is just sending udp requests with the metric you want to count to
     graphite, but if you're collection and measuring lots of stuff this could put quite a high load
     on graphite
     

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102. StatsD
     https://github.com/etsy/statsd/
     etsy wrote a great small tool called statsd to help you with that
     

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103. webserver webserver webserver
     graphite
     UDP statsd
     you can just hook it in between your servers and graphite as a small load balancing daemon.
     it receives all messages, aggregates them and then flushes them in a certain interval, like
     very 10 seconds to graphite
     

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104. webserver webserver webserver
     statsd statsd
     statsd
     graphite
     aggregated
     UPD message
     of course you also can run one statsd on every webserver, so that your statsd gets not
     overloaded
     

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105. webserver webserver webserver
     statsd statsd
     statsd
     graphite
     aggregated
     UPD message
     statsd
     and you even can arrange different statsd in a row
     

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106. Metric?
     what is a metric: three different types
     

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107. Counters
     counters (how often did something happen)
     

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108. Timers
     timer (how long did something take)
     

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109. Gauges
     gauges (collect arbitrary values (amount of a sale)
     

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110. graphite comes with a powerful interface where you can plot and aggregate this data into
     graphs and perform different mathematical functions on it to get it exactly the way you want
     to display your data
     

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111. https://metrics.librato.com/
     and if you don't want to be bothered with setting graphite up, you can also use hosted
     solutions like librato (statsd comes with different backends to push data to)
     

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112. http://mashable.com/2010/10/13/etsy-office-pics/
     and if you have all of this, you should make your graphs really visible, here a picture from the
     etsy office
     

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113. Remember:
     Response Times
     last but not least:
     

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114. Easiest approach:
     Get it out of the
     access log
     

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115. 192.168.56.1 - - [09/Jul/2012:19:18:19
     +0200] "GET /rg_trunk/webroot/c/af10c/
     images/template/rg_logo_default.png HTTP/
     1.1" 200 882 "http://devm/rg_trunk/webroot/
     directory/publications/"
     this is what it usually looks like
     

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116. Is this actually what
     we want to
     measure?
     Is this really the response time the user sees?
     

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117. External Resources
     CSS
     JavaScript
     Images
     Slow connections
     Slow
     Browsers
     SSL Handshakes
     DNS resolving
     so for the users the actual response time is actually when all this finished loading
     

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118. That is what we
     want to measure!
     

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119. https://github.com/lognormal/boomerang
     

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120. browser
     JS: boomerang
     logstash
     trackingServer
     access log
     requests
     tracking image
     with timing
     information as
     query
     parameters
     graphite
     statsd
     boomerang collects from various sources load times of the current page (e.g.
     window.performance api), and with them requests a tracking image from a tracking server
     you specify (should be on another domain, so that you don't send unnecessary cookies
     there). on this tracking server a logstash can parse the access logs and then send the
     collected timers via statsd to graphite
     

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121. http://twitter.com/BastianHofmann
     http://profiles.google.com/bashofmann
     http://lanyrd.com/people/BastianHofmann
     http://speakerdeck.com/u/bastianhofmann
     https://github.com/bashofmann
     https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bastian_Hofmann/
     mail@bastianhofmann.de
     thanks, you can contact me on any of these platforms or via mail. please go to joind.in and
     rate the talks you have seen
     

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