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Filebeat vs Fluentd: What are the differences?

Filebeat and Fluentd are both popular log forwarders used for collecting, processing, and forwarding log data. While they serve a similar purpose, there are several key differences between the two.

  1. Data Collection: Filebeat is designed for lightweight log file shipping and is primarily focused on tailing and forwarding logs. It uses a lightweight harvester to read log files line by line and ships them directly to the desired destination. On the other hand, Fluentd is a unified logging layer that supports collecting data from various sources, including log files, metrics, and events. It provides more flexibility in data collection by offering plugins for various sources.

  2. Data Processing: Filebeat is primarily focused on log shipping and does not offer extensive data processing capabilities. It mainly parses and sends log lines as-is to the configured output. In contrast, Fluentd offers powerful data processing capabilities through its built-in filtering system. It allows for data transformation, filtering, and enrichment before forwarding it to the output destination.

  3. Supported Outputs: Filebeat has a limited set of output options and is mainly designed to ship logs to Elasticsearch, Logstash, or directly to a file. It does not support as many output options as Fluentd. Fluentd, on the other hand, offers a wide range of output options, including Elasticsearch, MongoDB, Apache Kafka, Amazon S3, and more. This makes it more versatile in terms of where the log data can be sent.

  4. Extensibility: Filebeat is highly extensible but only through the use of plugins. It offers a plugin framework that allows users to develop custom input, output, and processing plugins. However, Fluentd has a more extensive ecosystem of plugins and provides a large repository of plugins that can be easily integrated for various purposes, such as data collection, parsing, buffering, and more.

  5. Community and Support: Both Filebeat and Fluentd have active communities and good documentation. However, Fluentd's community is larger and more established, resulting in a wider range of community-contributed plugins and better community support. This can be beneficial when facing issues or needing assistance with specific use cases.

  6. Ease of Setup and Configuration: Filebeat is known for its simplicity and ease of setup. It comes with a simple configuration file that allows users to define input sources, processing options, and output destinations. Fluentd, on the other hand, has a more complex configuration system that requires more detailed configuration files. It may have a steeper learning curve for beginners.

In summary, while both Filebeat and Fluentd are useful log forwarders, Filebeat is more focused on lightweight log shipping with a simpler setup, while Fluentd offers more advanced data processing capabilities and a wider range of output options, making it suitable for more complex and versatile log management requirements.

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    What is Filebeat?

    It helps you keep the simple things simple by offering a lightweight way to forward and centralize logs and files.

    What is Fluentd?

    Fluentd collects events from various data sources and writes them to files, RDBMS, NoSQL, IaaS, SaaS, Hadoop and so on. Fluentd helps you unify your logging infrastructure.

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    Blog Posts

    May 21 2020 at 12:02AM

    Rancher Labs

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    What are some alternatives to Filebeat and Fluentd?
    Logstash
    Logstash is a tool for managing events and logs. You can use it to collect logs, parse them, and store them for later use (like, for searching). If you store them in Elasticsearch, you can view and analyze them with Kibana.
    Rsyslog
    It offers high-performance, great security features and a modular design. It is able to accept inputs from a wide variety of sources, transform them, and output to the results to diverse destinations.
    Metricbeat
    Collect metrics from your systems and services. From CPU to memory, Redis to NGINX, and much more, It is a lightweight way to send system and service statistics.
    Kafka
    Kafka is a distributed, partitioned, replicated commit log service. It provides the functionality of a messaging system, but with a unique design.
    New Relic
    The world’s best software and DevOps teams rely on New Relic to move faster, make better decisions and create best-in-class digital experiences. If you run software, you need to run New Relic. More than 50% of the Fortune 100 do too.
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