The unsung heroes of log analysis are the log collectors. They are the hard-working daemons that run on servers to pull server metrics, parse log files, and transport them to backend systems such as Elasticsearch and PostgreSQL.
While visualization tools such as Kibana and re:dash bask in the glory, the log collectors ensure that all logs are routed to the correct locations in the first place.
In the open source world, the two most-popular data collectors are Logstash and Fluentd. Logstash is most known for being part of the ELK Stack while Fluentd has become increasingly used by communities of users of software such as Docker, GCP, and Elasticsearch.
In this article, we aim to give a no-frills comparison of Logstash, which is owned by by Elastic, and Fluentd, which is owned by Treasure Data. The goal is to collect all of the facts about these excellent software platforms in one place so that readers can make informed decisions for their next projects.
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