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112. Introduction

Managing a log collection system where agents are scattered around the whole network can be a daunting task especially if there are multiple teams in charge of each system.

The NXLog Manager is a log management solution which provides a web based administration interface to configure all parameters for the log collection and enables the log management administrator to efficiently monitor and manage the NXLog agents securely from a central console. The NXLog Manager is able to operate in clustered mode if the network topology requires multiple manager nodes.

This document provides information about the following topics:

  • Installation steps for the core NXLog Manager system.

  • Installation steps for the NXLog agents to be deployed on the client machines.

  • Details about each component of the NXLog Manager system accessible from the web interface.

112.1. Requirements

To use and administer NXLog Manager, the user is expected to be familiar with the following:

  • Using Mozilla Firefox or compatible web browser.

  • Regular expressions.

  • Concept of X.509 certificates and public key cryptography.

  • Log management basics.

  • Networking concepts.

The web interface supports the following browsers:

  • Mozilla Firefox 3.5 or higher.

  • Google Chrome 10 or higher.

There are known problems with Microsoft Internet Explorer and it is not supported.

112.2. Architecture

NXLog Manager web application

NXLog Manager is a Java based web application which can communicate with the NXLog agents.

NXLog

NXLog is the log collector with no frontend. NXLog can be used in both server and client mode. When running as a client (agent), NXLog will collect local log sources and will forward the data over the network. NXLog can also operate as a server to store messages locally or as a relay to forward messages to another instance.

The architecture of NXLog Manager allows log collection to function even if NXLog Manager is not running or the control channel is not functional, thus an NXLog Manager upgrade will not cause any interruption to the log collection process.