3 Capturing inputs
This chapter covers
- Reading log events from files
- Capturing console logging
- Ingesting OpenTelemetry data
- Integrating with logging frameworks
This chapter is all about capturing metrics, traces, and (most important) logs using Fluent Bit and a variety of plugins that support the latest techniques in the form of OpenTelemetry, as well as the established practices of using stdout and log files. We’ll focus on logs, as Fluent Bit originated from log handling. Logs also offer the most flexible signals and can be easily used to provide data that embodies metrics and traces; we’ll touch on techniques that allow us to change a signal’s type. We’ll come back to this subject in other chapters, including chapter 9.
3.1 Fluent Bit plugins
Fluent Bit has a respectable portfolio of plugins. To understand the relationships between the parts of Fluent Bit, let’s see how the inputs fit into the overall logical architecture, shown in figure 3.1.
Figure 3.1 Logical architecture of Fluent Bit, with this chapter's focus highlighted
