TrustRadius Insights
Graylog has proven to be a valuable solution for users in various industries, offering a range of use cases that address common challenges …
Graylog
Graylog
Overview
What is Graylog?
Graylog, headquartered in Houston, offers their eponymous platform for centralized log management that helps users find meaning in data faster so as to take action immediately. Graylog is available via Enterprise and Cloud plans, but also has a Small Business…
Recent Reviews
Continue reading
Useful and free SIEM tool
Allows insight into logs from various systems and products that would otherwise be time consuming to access and identify. Dashboards can …
Clean, robust and intuitive central logging
We have more than 60 applications, ranging from websites, Winforms, windows services, API's and console executables. All of them need to …
Graylog, Free Vs. Paid
Graylog is currently implemented for use across the entire organization at each deployment that I have provisioned. However, Graylog is …
Graylog can compete against the big boys.
We currently use Graylog as a log aggregator and some light weight SEIM. However, we haven't had the cycles to use the other features of …
Liven up your logging with Graylog!
We use Graylog to collect messages from a variety of different systems like network switch and routers to wifi controllers. We use Graylog …
Level Up Your Logging
Graylog is used to aggregate logs and SNMP traps from our network devices and Linux servers. We not only aggregate and store logs but …
Graylog is GREAT
We use Graylog to view all of our system logs in one place. We use this software to back up our logs so in the event we need to review …
Video Reviews
Leaving a video review helps other professionals like you evaluate products. Be the first one in your network to record a review of Graylog, and make your voice heard!
Product Demos
Demo GrayLog 2 with Laravel5 app
YouTube
Demo GrayLog 2 with Rails app
YouTube
Send Syslog from MuleSoft RTF to GrayLog
YouTube
Graylog Security
YouTube
Product Details
- About
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Graylog?
Graylog Video
Tour of Graylog v4.0
Graylog Competitors
Graylog Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows, Linux, , |
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Graylog, headquartered in Houston, offers their eponymous platform for centralized log management that helps users find meaning in data faster so as to take action immediately. Graylog is available via Enterprise and Cloud plans, but also has a Small Business Plan, and an Open (free) plan with limited features.
Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 4.8.
The most common users of Graylog are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(24)Loading...
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-7 of 7)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
June 16, 2022
Useful and free SIEM tool
Verified User
Professional in Information Technology
Information Technology & Services Company, 11-50 employees
Allows insight into logs from various systems and products that would otherwise be time consuming to access and identify. Dashboards can be customised to your preferences and Alerts/emails can be defined when specific events or patterns occur, which is not possible directly from the log source. Our use case is primarily security related looking at access/sign-in logs from various platforms and then sending alerts as required.
- Ingesting various log sources
- Dashboards - Customisable
- Event alerts/emails
- Support for more log sources
- Event alerts/emails - Some cases where unable to separate data from multiple clients, and no easy fix
- API - Limits results to 10,000 and can cause server to lockup on queries that exceed the limit
Well suited for scenarios such as:
- Detecting user OS logins, or user logins from unknown IPs etc.
- Access attempts made on a firewall or other network infrastructure
- Monitoring changes to Active Directory Groups
January 18, 2022
Clean, robust and intuitive central logging
Verified User
Team Lead in Information Technology
Automotive Company, 501-1000 employees
We have more than 60 applications, ranging from websites, Winforms, windows services, API's and console executables. All of them need to log their tracing and/or error information to a central location. It needs to be central because you don't want to search for this location, especially when you only have 5 minutes to solve a problem. We used to have a dedicated database for logging, but this does not eliminate the time lost searching for "the" logs. Also, [the] configuration used to be a manual and self-made business that wasn't always clear. Graylog is a dedicated logging solution that comes "out of the box" and is made accessible through a well-known plugin architecture (log4net if you're developing with the .NET framework).
- Nice search interface and powerful search options
- JSON extractor to "extract" variables and values from JSON input.
- Clear and intuitive dashboards
- In the front end, the search "tricks" could have been made a little easier to find. There seems to be some kind of "search language" where you can use keywords like "AND" and "OR," etc. (much like SQL language). But it's totally unclear what does work and what doesn't. If you don't know that it's there, you'll never find it. Of course, after you do know it, you can find many examples online on how to use it.
- The backend is not for the inexperienced. Graylog is based on elastic search and MongoDB. And it's Linux. This means that Graylog is actually 3 applications that you need to configure in a Linux environment. This means that you need quite some experience to get this running. Fortunately, though, things are kept as simple as possible. What I mean is that at first, the task seems daunting, but then you'll find that there's not much to it after all.
- We've had multiple occasions that disk size was full or indexes went larger than allowed. When this happens, the systems can become corrupt. The solution is to just delete the indexes, but it took quite some time to find this out.
- We disabled "Automatic updates" on the Linux server because unattended updates always lead to problems. This is not a real problem, or solely related to Graylog, but worth mentioning. Updates are best handled manually.
For small companies, Graylog is the best solution possible. It's easy to configure and "just works." Above everything else, it's free. The only thing I hold against it is the fact that it's Linux-based. [This] makes sense because Elasticsearch is Linux-based. But Linux adds a layer of complexity that we don't need for something basic as a logging server. I'm pretty sure that we would have had a logging server years earlier if I had to convince quite a few decision-making people to go ahead with it anyway.
April 29, 2020
Graylog, Free Vs. Paid
Verified User
Consultant in Information Technology
Telecommunications Company, 201-500 employees
Graylog is currently implemented for use across the entire organization at each deployment that I have provisioned. However, Graylog is only referenced by myself, or Information Systems Staff. Graylog currently mainly addresses two separate needs for us. First, it allows the capture of NAT translations for DMCA related notifications for subscribers. Secondly, it addresses the need for an internal syslog server.
- The free edition is extraordinarily powerful.
- Log searching is quick.
- The web interface is sleek, and the install is relatively quick.
- Rotating the indexes are hard! It is also easy to brick your deployment. Purchase support, but it's so ludicrously expensive, that I'd go with a different vendor.
- Community support dances around questions and points to documentation, which is there, but is not always accurate.
- Searching logs uses logic that is not always easy to use.
- There is not a good way to size how much space you need for a given log retention. It also does not tolerate running out of space using a smart feature or such to auto delete. The heap can also overflow.
- It uses MangoDB instead of a different database.
- The OVA is not approved for production use.
- It is resource intensive.
If you just need a logging server that will most likely work, and won't break the bank. This is it, you can stop looking. Period.
January 29, 2020
Graylog can compete against the big boys.
We currently use Graylog as a log aggregator and some light weight SEIM. However, we haven't had the cycles to use the other features of it. Presently solves our centralized log collection problem.
- Log Aggregation pipeline
- Dashboards
- Pricing for Enterprise is a bit unrealistic.
- Archiving should be a standard feature in the community edition.
Graylog is suited for all environments. Its easy setup and use is great for small businesses. Its flexibility for configuration of ingested logs is excellent for medium to large scale, and its ingest capability is great for super-sized. One size fits all for Graylog. It's a great competitor to QRadar and Splunk, and even AlienVault USM/OSSIM
December 09, 2019
Liven up your logging with Graylog!
Verified User
Administrator in Engineering
Computer & Network Security Company, 1001-5000 employees
We use Graylog to collect messages from a variety of different systems like network switch and routers to wifi controllers. We use Graylog to group and create graphs to show specific information. We also use Graylog to send messages to us to alert of certain activities. Graylog is widely used in our office because it is cost-effective and the ability to be tweak for each team.
- The ability to add and remove information to the messages. This makes it so you can customize each message and get the information you really want.
- Being able to search for different criteria allows finding the exact data you want without having to manually filter the data.
- Searching tends to be quick and is able to process large amounts of data quickly so you don't have to wait forever for your data.
- The graphs and visualizations are limited on the dashboard if there were more options it would be better for different kinds of data.
Graylog can collect messages and group them, so if you want to get alerted when there is an abnormal amount of particular messages, Graylog can do that. Graylog can be used to analyze traffic, and if traffic over a certain level and is sustained for an amount of time, it can send the information of which mac addresses are causing the traffic influx.
June 30, 2019
Level Up Your Logging
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Internet Company, 501-1000 employees
Graylog is used to aggregate logs and SNMP traps from our network devices and Linux servers. We not only aggregate and store logs but extract values to make logging more searchable than using flat files with BASH utilities (grep, cut, awk, etc) to search. For our critical devices, we also use it to forward logs to a room in our private chat service via a custom integration.
- Graylog does a great job of its core function: log aggregation, retention, and searching.
- Graylog has a very flexible configuration. The backend for storage is Elasticsearch and MongoDB is used to store the configuration. You have to option to make your configuration as simple as possible by storing everything on one box, or you can scale everything out horizontally by using a cluster of Elasticsearch nodes and MongoDB servers with several Graylog servers pointed to all the necessary nodes.
- Graylog does a good job of abstracting away a fair portion of Elasticsearch index management (sharding, creation, deletion, rotation, etc).
- Some aspects of Graylog are less than intuitive. For example, if you want to run different extractor rules on different device types due to format differences, you need to create different inputs. Since inputs are their own processes that require ports to be bound to them, you either need different IP addresses for each input or a different (read: non-standard) port, which can make the device configuration more complicated.
- Although Graylog abstracts quite a bit of Elasticsearch management away, it is by no means a turnkey solution. Upgrades to Graylog can require upgrades to Elasticsearch, which occasionally requires manual intervention to Elasticsearch. Same goes for mongo. If you're looking to scale out, there is some documentation to get you started, but the heavy lifting is on you.
- As everything is stored in Elasticsearch, there are no more flat files to tail; moving from a "traditional" logging aggregator like Syslog(-ng), a culture change is going to be required.
If you already have a basic understanding of Elasticsearch and/or MongoDB, Graylog will be a great fit when it comes to log aggregation. It will be a decent option even if you don't have any experience but have the time and willingness to roll up your sleeves that learning those tools will require. Graylog supports plugins to extend functionality for things like SNMP traps, telemetry collection, and solar flares. As is the case with most software with plugins, if the core functionality for which you are looking (i.e. not logging) is based on a plugin, Graylog probably isn't for you. The majority of the plugins in the marketplace are developed by third-parties looking to solve their specific use case so bug fixes and new features are not a given.
December 05, 2018
Graylog is GREAT
Verified User
Technician in Information Technology
Utilities Company, 51-200 employees
We use Graylog to view all of our system logs in one place. We use this software to back up our logs so in the event we need to review them we can go back as far as we need to. This software allows us to collect all our data easily.
- Manages logs for a variety of devices
- Easy to set up
- A great open source solution
- If you don't know your way around Linux setup would be tricky. Some step by step videos would be helpful.
This is well suited for a small to medium sized environment where you are looking to collect all your system logs. In larger scale environments it would be trickier to pull this software off. The software can only handle a certain amount of logs per second, if you have lots of devices you should invest in a more premium product.