XpoLog 7 System Administration

CHAPTER 11

BACK TO ALL CHAPTERS

XpoLog system administrators are expected to perform tasks like:

Checking system health (disk space, CPU used, memory)
Checking cluster health
Checking various process health
Checking for updates and applying patches
Creating users, groups and managing security
Managing alerts and notifications
Installing apps
Adding logs and data from different systems
Managing tasks and collection policies
Lodging technical support cases

Some of these tasks have been discussed already in the other Quick Start Guides.

This chapter covers some of the other core tasks.

Checking XpoLog Health

To get a bird’s-eye view of the XpoLog system’s health:

Browse to XpoLog Manager screen, and from the navigation menu, select “SYSTEM” > “System Health”:

The overview screen shows the health of different XpoLog components:

The Data tab shows the:

current data size on disk
number of collected logs
amount of data collected in the last one hour and today
average data collected per day over the last seven days
percentage of space used from the data space allowed by the license

The System Tasks tab shows the status of enabled XpoLog service components.

The “Memory Usage” and “Disk Space Usage” tabs show how XpoLog is using server memory, how much space is available, and where XpoLog data is being saved
The “Configuration” tab shows the overall health of various user-configured components like logs, apps, monitors or saved searches:

The “System Alerts” tab shows all positive (good) or negative (bad) messages generated by XpoLog. This is a good place to start troubleshooting XpoLog performance.

The “System Information” tab shows overall system-related data such as XpoLog version, licensing information, time zone, operating system, machine architecture, and Java memory.

Applying Patch

From XpoLog Manager navigation menu, select “SYSTEM”, then “About”:

This shows the current XpoLog version and any patch applied:

To apply a new patch that has been downloaded/obtained from XpoLog, click the “publish patch” link. This opens a screen where you can choose the patch file from the local machine and run it.

Checking and Updating XpoLog License

From XpoLog Manager navigation pane, select “SETTINGS” > “System Settings”:

Click on the “Security” submenu from the “System Settings” menu:

In the “SECURITY” tab, enable the checkbox “Activate Security”. By default, the “Login URL” should be “root.jsp”:

Choose an authentication mode for users.

TIP: XpoLog authentication can be integrated with any LDAP system like Active Directory. With this approach, administrators can easily grant access to XpoLog to AD users and groups and take advantage of the AD password policy. There is no need to create separate XpoLog users and groups.

Click Save

Managing XpoLog Security

From XpoLog Manager navigation menu, select “SECURITY”, then any relevant menu:

For creating, dropping and modifying users, choose “Users”
For creating, dropping and modifying user groups, choose “Groups”
For creating policies for different types of users, choose “Policies”. This will allow you to create custom policies:

The Security tab from the “Authentication” screen also allows users to enable/disable security and choose an authentication mode (this has already been shown in the last section):

To change user passwords, choose “User General Settings” menu:

Sending System Information to XpoLog Support

From the XpoLog Manager navigation menu, select “SYSTEM” > “Support”
In the next screen, make sure “Basic Information” is chosen from the drop-down list:

Click the “Export All Information” button at the bottom of the screen (or “Export All Light” for a limited amount of information). This will download a zipped file which you can send to XpoLog support: