fleet/docs/1-Using-Fleet/4-Osquery-logs.md

Osquery Logs

• Osquery logging plugins
  • Filesystem
  • Firehose
  • Kinesis
  • Lambda
  • PubSub
  • Stdout

Osquery agents are typically configured to send logs to the Fleet server (--logger_plugin=tls). This is not a requirement, and any other logger plugin can be used even when osquery clients are connecting to the Fleet server to retrieve configuration or run live queries. See the osquery logging documentation for more about configuring logging on the agent.

If --logger_plugin=tls is used with osquery clients, the following configuration can be applied on the Fleet server for handling the incoming logs.

Osquery logging plugins

Fleet supports the following logging plugins for osquery logs:

• Filesystem - Logs are written to the local Fleet server filesystem.
• Firehose - Logs are written to AWS Firehose streams.
• Kinesis - Logs are written to AWS Kinesis streams.
• Lambda - Logs are written to AWS Lambda functions.
• PubSub - Logs are written to Google Cloud PubSub topics.
• Stdout - Logs are written to stdout.

To set the osquery logging plugins, use the --osquery_result_log_plugin and --osquery_status_log_plugin flags (or equivalents for environment variables or configuration files).

Filesystem

The default logging plugin.

• Plugin name: filesystem
• Flag namespace: filesystem

With the filesystem plugin, osquery result and/or status logs are written to the local filesystem on the Fleet server. This is typically used with a log forwarding agent on the Fleet server that will push the logs into a logging pipeline. Note that if multiple load-balanced Fleet servers are used, the logs will be load-balanced across those servers (not duplicated).

Firehose

• Plugin name: firehose
• Flag namespace: firehose

With the Firehose plugin, osquery result and/or status logs are written to AWS Firehose streams. This is a very good method for aggregating osquery logs into AWS S3 storage.

Note that Firehose logging has limits discussed in the documentation. When Fleet encounters logs that are too big for Firehose, notifications will be output in the Fleet logs and those logs will not be sent to Firehose.

Kinesis

• Plugin name: kinesis
• Flag namespace: kinesis

With the Kinesis plugin, osquery result and/or status logs are written to AWS Kinesis streams.

Note that Kinesis logging has limits discussed in the documentation. When Fleet encounters logs that are too big for Kinesis, notifications will be output in the Fleet logs and those logs will not be sent to Kinesis.

Lambda

• Plugin name: lambda
• Flag namespace: lambda

With the Lambda plugin, osquery result and/or status logs are written to AWS Lambda functions.

Lambda processes logs from Fleet synchronously, so the Lambda function used must not take enough processing time that the osquery client times out while writing logs. If there is heavy processing to be done, use Lambda to store the logs in another datastore/queue before performing the long-running process.

Note that Lambda logging has limits discussed in the documentation. The maximum size of a log sent to Lambda is 6MB. When Fleet encounters logs that are too big for Lambda, notifications will be output in the Fleet logs and those logs will not be sent to Lambda.

PubSub

• Plugin name: pubsub
• Flag namespace: pubsub

With the PubSub plugin, osquery result and/or status logs are written to PubSub topics.

Note that messages over 10MB will be dropped, with a notification sent to the fleet logs, as these can never be processed by PubSub.

Stdout

• Plugin name: stdout
• Flag namespace: stdout

With the stdout plugin, osquery result and/or status logs are written to stdout on the Fleet server. This is typically used for debugging or with a log forwarding setup that will capture and forward stdout logs into a logging pipeline. Note that if multiple load-balanced Fleet servers are used, the logs will be load-balanced across those servers (not duplicated).