observIQ is busy making simple log management even simpler. We’ve updated our onboarding process to make it easier to install your first agent and get started. We’ve added new Cisco source support, and released a new agent version. Other quality of life improvements include performance enhancements, compact formatting for log data, more filter options in Live Tail, and updated icons.

Features

• New Agent Setup Onboarding Process
  • Simplified, guided agent installation process for new accounts to get started
• New Sources
  • Added support for Cisco Catalyst
  • Added Support for Cisco Meraki
• New Agent Version
  • New Agent version released – update directly in observIQ by clicking the “update” button on the Fleet page

Changes

• Compact Date Formatting
  • Changed the way dates appear in the platform to use significantly less space
• Updated Icons
  • Updated icons across the platform
    • HAProxy
    • Sonicwall
    • TCP
    • UDP
• Live Tail
  • Even more filter options
  • Add filters based on specific logs by selecting them in the stream
  • Performance improvements

Improvements

• New Dashboards
  • Cisco Catalyst Dashboard
  • Cisco Meraki Dashboard
  • Rails Dashboard
  • uWSGI Dashboard
  • Updated Syslog Dashboard
• Syslog Improvements
  • Overall quality of life improvements for Syslog monitoring
• Improved Error Logging
  • More detail available in expanded logs
• Dynamic Filter Support
  • Added dynamic filters to all sources

Fixes

• Windows Events
  • Fixed issue logging Windows Events

Lots of big changes are coming your way, but our favorite is arm support. Arm is a powerful architecture that is taking over in the form of raspberry pi and arm-based kubernetes. observIQ is the first cloud observability platform to natively support log management for arm-based environments.

Features

• Arm-based support
  • observIQ’s log agent now supports arm-based platforms and networks, such as raspberry pi, and kubernetes arm environments.
• Single click agent upgrade
  • observIQ is constantly improving our agent. Now, when an update is available, a single-click update button appears on any available sources in observIQ.
• Live Tail 
  • Added collapsable log lines with full information
  • Click the carrot on the left of a log line during a live tail session to see everything included in the log

Changes

• Daily limit notifications for free tier
  • Automatic email notification if 3GB daily limit is reached by free tier users
• Live Tail sessions start automatically
  • When navigating from Explore or Fleet, Live Tail sessions will play as soon as the page loads
• UI Changes
  • Clearer install process
  • Navigation breadcrumbs
• Batch Analytics Export
  • Group and export saved analytics dashboards easily in observIQ

Improvements

• Sources automatically installed for MacOS and Windows
  • MacOS agent will automatically install and set up a journald source in observIQ
  • Windows agent will automatically install and set up a Windows Event source in observIQ
• More preset dashboards
  • We continue to add useful, preset dashboards for users to analyze log data
• Extended retention support for S3 endpoints other than AWS
  • We will continue adding support for more S3 endpoints
• In-depth guides for first agent installation
  • It’s not hard, but now it’s even easier with in-depth guides

Fixes

• Agent
  • Fixes to smooth automatic updates
  • Fixes to fringe cases where log severity was labeled incorrectly
  • Fixed issue where journald sources appeared frozen after several weeks of high volume use

We’ve added a new agent – Mongo. Lot’s of UI changes, making observIQ even easier to set up and navigate. Templates now include default values that will generate valuable insights in most common use cases. We’ve also added dashboard templates for Mac and Windows, and tooltips for quickly solving agent errors… if those errors don’t fix themselves – we also added backend optimizations to automatically fix issues and restart interrupted connections.

Features

• Agents
  • Added Mongo Agent – great for collecting logs from multiple containers, front, and backend activity

Changes

• Agents
  • UI changes for easier navigation
• Templates
  • UI changes for easier navigation
• Sources
  • Added button in sources to jump to Explore or Live Tail with source filter applied

Improvements

• Agents
  • Added tooltips for quickly solving agent errors.
  • Automatically installs corresponding sources for Mac and Linux agents
  • General optimizations, including automatic restart process if connection is interrupted
• Templates
  • Templates are now populated with commonly used default values
• Sign Up
  • Users guided through setup process immediately after sign up
• Dashboards
  • Added userful premade dashboards for MacOS and Windows

Fixes

• User Permissions
  • Set restrictions on permissions that restricted users can give other users
• Alerts
  • Fixed issue where slack alerts occasionally did not include k8s metadata

This week we are excited to announce a new extended retention feature, included in all plans, that allows you to automatically compress and archive all of your logs directly to your AWS account. We’ve also made improvements to sign up and set up, UI, installation and uninstallation, and account management.

Features

• Extended Retention
  • Archive logs automatically to an AWS S3 Bucket
    • Connect AWS S3 bucket with account ID and secret access key
    • Logs compressed and archived every hour
    • Included in all plans
  • See archive list directly in observIQ
    • Clicking an archive opens file location in AWS
  • observIQ automatically detects invalid or inaccurate AWS credentials
    • Any failed archiving attempts will retry when new credentials are entered

Changes

• Documentation
  • Changed documentation on Windows, Linux, and MacOS installation process to be more streamlined
  • Added docs for Kubernetes and OpenShift

Improvements

• Sign In and Set Up
  • New users have the option to go straight to setup before confirming their email
• Fleet
  • Improved install/uninstall scripts
• Live Tail
  • Added support for wildcard queries

Fixes

• Sign up/Set up
  • Fixed issue where users would see an error message after accepting an invite to create an observIQ account even though the account was created successfully

Everything is running smoothly at observIQ this week. This update comes with some valuable quality of life improvements to the platform, a new Dashboard plugin, and improvements to set up, Alerts, and Live Tail.

Features

• Dashboards
  • Added Netflow plugin
• Alerts
  • Added feature to disable notification expiration timer

Changes

• Sign In and Set Up
  • New Customer plans will automatically freeze after trial expiration, rather than accumulate logs and invoices
    • Plans can still be chosen before expiration, or picked up any time after
    • Free plan is still 100% free
• Kubernetes
  • Events source now omits log lines from expired events

Improvements

• Sign In and Set Up
  • Optimized backend processes so account creation and initial setup is even faster
  • Improved verification email
    • Additional information
    • Automatic light/dark theme
    • Added backup link in case verification fails
• Live Tail
  • Exceeding throughput limit no longer stops data stream
  • Updated ‘Sources’ filter to include all valid sources
• Alerts
  • Custom Alerts setup fields are automatically populated with relevant settings
    • Settings can still be fully customized

Fixes

• Live Tail
  • Fixed issue where Live Tail ‘Type’ filter would not narrow displayed results
• Alerts
  • Fixed issue where some Alerts would not include relevant log lines attached

We’re excited to announce some big releases, including lower pricing, automated deployments, programmable alerts, easier sign up, and valuable changes to Live Tail.

Features

• Automated Deployment with Ansible
  • Simple ‘configuration as code’ solution
  • Automatically deploy observeIQ Cloud agents across any/all Linux hosts
  • Deploy custom templates with simple Template ID’s
  • Store deployment code in Git to version deployments
• Alerts
  • Added fully programmable alerts under  Advanced Options when creating an alert

Changes

• Reduced Pricing
  • Billing period minimum charges reduced to $5, $10, or $50 depending on retention tier
    • Prices per GB remain $0.75, $1.00, and $1.50 respectively
  • Existing paid accounts will automatically move to reduced minimum pricing at the start of their next billing period
• Sign Up
  • Confirmation emails now redirect users to setup page rather than back to login
    • For security, this feature only works on machines that already have login credentials, otherwise email redirect goes to login page

Improvements

• Live Tail
  • General improvements for higher efficiency and responsiveness
  • Added more detailed messages in Live Tail stream
    • Clearer messages for start/stop and messages to indicate that Live Tail is running even if no tracked events are occurring
  • Live Tail will remain active even if no events occur for a long period of time
• Sign Up
  • New message and animation indicates when an account is being created
• Archives
  • Optimization improvements to archive log files
  • Automatically remove duplicate logs

Fixes

• Live Tail
  • Fixed issue where new searches would briefly display results from previous searches
  • Fixed issue with delayed response from Start button after stopping Live Tail
• Sign Up
  • Fixed issue where new users invited to existing accounts were not receiving proper invite information
  • Fixed issue where duplicate company profiles could be created at sign up

This week at observIQ, we are excited to release new alerts customizations, support for new sources, improved setup UI, install/uninstall guides, and the official launch of a powerful new feature for real time event and log tracking – Live Tail.

Features

• Live Tail
  • Monitor logs across all deployments in real time
  • Search for specific events or key phrases to filter logs as they occur
  • Start/stop event log at will
  • Record/save event streams
  • And much more!
• Alerts
  • Alerts can now send relevant log lines along with alert notifications
• Sources
  • Added source: MacOS
  • Added source: uWSGI
  • Added source: Ubiquiti
  • Added source: Netflow/sflow
  • Added Source: CodeIgniter
  • Added Source: Apache Common
  • Added Source: Apache Combined

Changes

• Plugins
  • Openshift plugin: metadata is now optional
• Sign Up
  • No telephone number required

Improvements

• Setup
  • Improved UI and guidance through setup process
  • Added source deployment guide
  • Added uninstallation guide for removing agents
• Billing
  • Simplified billing and account preferences interface
  • Visual confirmation of payment processing through Stripe (before payment confirmation)
• General efficiency improvements

Fixes

• Search
  • Fixed issue where time picker would disappear while using search field
  • Fixed issue where ‘filter out’ search option would not add filter to the search bar
• Windows
  • Fixed issue where Windows agents could not properly sync with local timezone