Syslog and OpenObserve Integration

Input and output integration overview

The Syslog plugin enables the collection of syslog messages from various sources using standard networking protocols. This functionality is critical for environments where systems need to be monitored and logged efficiently.

This configuration pairs Telegraf’s HTTP output with OpenObserve’s native JSON ingestion API, turning any Telegraf agent into a first-class OpenObserve collector.

Integration details

Syslog

The Syslog plugin for Telegraf captures syslog messages transmitted over various protocols such as TCP, UDP, and TLS. It supports both RFC 5424 (the newer syslog protocol) and the older RFC 3164 (BSD syslog protocol). This plugin operates as a service input, effectively starting a service that listens for incoming syslog messages. Unlike traditional plugins, service inputs may not function with standard interval settings or CLI options like --once. It includes options for setting network configurations, socket permissions, message handling, and connection handling. Furthermore, the integration with Rsyslog allows forwarding of logging messages, making it a powerful tool for collecting and relaying system logs in real-time, thus seamlessly integrating into monitoring and logging systems.

OpenObserve

OpenObserve is an open source observability platform written in Rust that stores data cost-effectively on object storage or local disk. It exposes REST endpoints such as /api/{org}/ingest/metrics/_json that accept batched metric documents conforming to a concise JSON schema, making it an attractive drop-in replacement for Loki or Elasticsearch stacks. The Telegraf HTTP output plugin streams metrics to arbitrary HTTP targets; when the "data_format = "json"" serializer is selected, Telegraf batches its metric objects into a payload that matches OpenObserve’s ingestion contract. The plugin supports configurable batch size, custom headers, TLS, and compression, allowing operators to authenticate with Basic or Bearer tokens and to enforce back-pressure without additional collectors. By reusing existing Telegraf agents already collecting system, application, or SNMP data, organizations can funnel rich telemetry into OpenObserve dashboards and SQL-like analytics with minimal overhead, enabling unified observability, long-term retention, and real-time alerting without vendor lock-in.

Configuration

Syslog

[[inputs.syslog]]
  ## Protocol, address and port to host the syslog receiver.
  ## If no host is specified, then localhost is used.
  ## If no port is specified, 6514 is used (RFC5425#section-4.1).
  ##   ex: server = "tcp://localhost:6514"
  ##       server = "udp://:6514"
  ##       server = "unix:///var/run/telegraf-syslog.sock"
  ## When using tcp, consider using 'tcp4' or 'tcp6' to force the usage of IPv4
  ## or IPV6 respectively. There are cases, where when not specified, a system
  ## may force an IPv4 mapped IPv6 address.
  server = "tcp://127.0.0.1:6514"

  ## Permission for unix sockets (only available on unix sockets)
  ## This setting may not be respected by some platforms. To safely restrict
  ## permissions it is recommended to place the socket into a previously
  ## created directory with the desired permissions.
  ##   ex: socket_mode = "777"
  # socket_mode = ""

  ## Maximum number of concurrent connections (only available on stream sockets like TCP)
  ## Zero means unlimited.
  # max_connections = 0

  ## Read timeout (only available on stream sockets like TCP)
  ## Zero means unlimited.
  # read_timeout = "0s"

  ## Optional TLS configuration (only available on stream sockets like TCP)
  # tls_cert = "/etc/telegraf/cert.pem"
  # tls_key  = "/etc/telegraf/key.pem"
  ## Enables client authentication if set.
  # tls_allowed_cacerts = ["/etc/telegraf/clientca.pem"]

  ## Maximum socket buffer size (in bytes when no unit specified)
  ## For stream sockets, once the buffer fills up, the sender will start
  ## backing up. For datagram sockets, once the buffer fills up, metrics will
  ## start dropping. Defaults to the OS default.
  # read_buffer_size = "64KiB"

  ## Period between keep alive probes (only applies to TCP sockets)
  ## Zero disables keep alive probes. Defaults to the OS configuration.
  # keep_alive_period = "5m"

  ## Content encoding for message payloads
  ## Can be set to "gzip" for compressed payloads or "identity" for no encoding.
  # content_encoding = "identity"

  ## Maximum size of decoded packet (in bytes when no unit specified)
  # max_decompression_size = "500MB"

  ## Framing technique used for messages transport
  ## Available settings are:
  ##   octet-counting  -- see RFC5425#section-4.3.1 and RFC6587#section-3.4.1
  ##   non-transparent -- see RFC6587#section-3.4.2
  # framing = "octet-counting"

  ## The trailer to be expected in case of non-transparent framing (default = "LF").
  ## Must be one of "LF", or "NUL".
  # trailer = "LF"

  ## Whether to parse in best effort mode or not (default = false).
  ## By default best effort parsing is off.
  # best_effort = false

  ## The RFC standard to use for message parsing
  ## By default RFC5424 is used. RFC3164 only supports UDP transport (no streaming support)
  ## Must be one of "RFC5424", or "RFC3164".
  # syslog_standard = "RFC5424"

  ## Character to prepend to SD-PARAMs (default = "_").
  ## A syslog message can contain multiple parameters and multiple identifiers within structured data section.
  ## Eg., [id1 name1="val1" name2="val2"][id2 name1="val1" nameA="valA"]
  ## For each combination a field is created.
  ## Its name is created concatenating identifier, sdparam_separator, and parameter name.
  # sdparam_separator = "_"

OpenObserve

[[outputs.http]]
  ## OpenObserve JSON metrics ingestion endpoint
  url = "https://api.openobserve.ai/api/default/ingest/metrics/_json"

  ## Use POST to push batches
  method = "POST"

  ## Basic auth header (base64 encoded "username:password")
  headers = { Authorization = "Basic dXNlcjpwYXNzd29yZA==" }

  ## Timeout for HTTP requests
  timeout = "10s"

  ## Override Content-Type to match OpenObserve expectation
  content_type = "application/json"

  ## Force Telegraf to batch and serialize metrics as JSON
  data_format = "json"

  ## JSON serializer specific options
  json_timestamp_units = "1ms"

  ## Uncomment to restrict batch size
  # batch_size = 5000

Input and output integration examples

Syslog

1. Centralized Log Management: Use the Syslog plugin to aggregate log messages from multiple servers into a central logging system. This setup can help in monitoring overall system health, troubleshooting issues effectively, and maintaining audit trails by collecting syslog data from different sources.

2. Real-Time Alerting: Integrate the Syslog plugin with alerting tools to trigger real-time notifications when specific log patterns or errors are detected. For example, if a critical system error appears in the logs, an alert can be sent to the operations team, minimizing downtime and performing proactive maintenance.

3. Security Monitoring: Leverage the Syslog plugin for security monitoring by capturing logs from firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and other security devices. This logging capability enhances security visibility and helps in investigating potentially malicious activities by analyzing the captured syslog data.

4. Application Performance Tracking: Utilize the Syslog plugin to monitor application performance by collecting logs from various applications. This integration helps in analyzing the application’s behavior and performance trends, thus aiding in optimizing application processes and ensuring smoother operation.

OpenObserve

1. Edge Device Health Mirror: Deploy Telegraf on thousands of industrial IoT devices to capture temperature, vibration, and power metrics, then use this output to push JSON batches to OpenObserve. Plant operators gain a real-time overview of machine health and can trigger maintenance based on anomalies without relying on heavyweight collectors.

2. Blue-Green Deployment Canary: Attach a lightweight Telegraf sidecar to each Kubernetes release-candidate pod that scrapes /metrics and forwards container stats to a dedicated “canary” stream in OpenObserve. Continuous comparison of error rates between blue and green versions empowers the CI pipeline to auto-roll back poor performers within seconds.

3. Multi-Tenant SaaS Billing Pipeline: Emit per-customer usage counters via Telegraf and tag them with tenant_id; the HTTP plugin posts them to OpenObserve where SQL reports aggregate usage into invoices, eliminating separate metering services and simplifying compliance audits.

4. Security Threat Scoring: Fuse Suricata events and host resource metrics in Telegraf, deliver them to OpenObserve’s analytics engine, and run stream-processing rules that correlate spikes in suspicious traffic with CPU saturation to produce an actionable threat score and automatically open tickets in a SOAR platform.

Feedback

Thank you for being part of our community! If you have any general feedback or found any bugs on these pages, we welcome and encourage your input. Please submit your feedback in the InfluxDB community Slack.