System logging overview

From routine operations to degradation of network performance, from alerts about disruption of services to failure of device—all are events that can occur in the network infrastructure. Therefore, network administrators must have the right tools to be alerted to these events. For that reason, tools such as logs and alerts play an important role in that process. While logs are useful for detailed analysis and archiving of records, alerts enable you to be vigilant about the performance and configuration of the networking devices. With that in mind, system logging is a standard that records events in the network in general, and on servers, clients, and network devices in particular. Meanwhile, syslog is a protocol that enables access to system logging events as specified by the IETF's RFC 3164. Syslog operates on a client/server network architecture...