A major component of maintaining high performing systems is understanding what’s occurring. Enter log management. By capturing data in logs, developers and engineers have easy access to system snapshots, which can be used to diagnose issues, and subsequently make necessary performance tweaks. Check out my performance fundamentals log management article to further investigate how logging can boost performance.

Log management gurus Loggly recently debuted Live Tail, a neat integration which allows for comprehensive log analysis. The command line offers a wealth of potential prompts, which users can employ to pull up select information. For instance, users can input basic commands like grep and tail. This allows for real-time log data monitoring, and user-imposed filtering via command line prompts. 

Live Tail thus harnesses the functionality, and simplicity, of the command line on Linux and Mac. Rather than attempting to build a proprietary tool with the functionality to monitor all sorts of system info, merely integrating with the command line offers customizable access to specific logs. Using Windows instead of a Unix-based system? Live Tail can sync up with Powershell too. What’s more, aggregated data can be sent to third-party software, like HipChat, which accommodates distributed teams.

Check out the Loggly website for more details on Live Tail, including installation instructions, prerequisites, and basic command line options and examples.