Logging is the practice of recording events, messages, and state changes generated by applications, infrastructure, and platforms. Logs provide a detailed, time-ordered record of what happened in a system. Also known as log management, logging is a core pillar of observability and troubleshooting.
When systems fail or behave unexpectedly, logs often provide the most detailed clues about root causes. Without effective logging, teams struggle to diagnose issues, investigate incidents, or understand system behavior—leading to longer outages and higher operational risk.
Applications and platforms emit log entries, which are collected by agents and forwarded to central log stores. Logs are indexed, searchable, and often correlated with metrics and traces to provide context during debugging and analysis.
BuildPiper integrates logging into its observability workflows by correlating logs with deployments, environments, and release events. This helps teams quickly understand how changes impact system behavior and resolve issues faster.
Monitoring focuses on metrics and alerts, while logging captures detailed event data. Logs explain what happened, while metrics show how systems are performing.
Kubernetes workloads are dynamic and ephemeral, making log collection and correlation more complex. Centralised logging is essential to avoid losing critical information.
BuildPiper links logs to deployment and release context, allowing teams to analyse issues in relation to specific changes and rollouts.