Question

You have multiple microservices running in production, and it’s becoming hard to trace issues across the services. How do you implement centralized logging to make troubleshooting easier?

Answer

To implement centralized logging, I would set up a logging aggregation system using the ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) or EFK Stack (Elasticsearch, Fluentd, Kibana). Here’s the process:

Log to a Centralized System

Each microservice logs its output (using SLF4J and Logback). These logs are collected using Logstash or Fluentd and shipped to Elasticsearch.

Structured Logging

Ensure logs are structured in JSON format to make them easier to search and analyze. Logs should include important metadata such as trace IDs, request IDs, and service names to correlate logs across services.

Visualize Logs with Kibana

Use Kibana to visualize logs and create dashboards that allow developers to easily search and filter logs across microservices.
By aggregating logs from all services into a single location, it becomes easier to trace issues and monitor service health.