Logging overview

The Trust Protection Platform logging system consists of the following components:

  • Events: Describe an error or status. For example, an event fires when a certificate is about to expire.
  • Venafi log server: Monitors events, processes logs, and manages sending alert information to specified destinations.
  • Default SQL Channel : Stores a history of events as a log to a database. These logs can be filtered using a Filter Channel to reduce unwanted or unhelpful event logs.
  • Notification Rules: Determine which events are forwarded to channels for processing and which events are ignored.
  • Channels: Manage the delivery of processed log messages in a variety of formats.

The component in Venafi Platform process events, and those events are reviewed by the logging servers. The basic logging of events happens in the default channel. Additionally, based on notification rules, information about events can be passed to channels for delivery to an external system, such as a mail server.

Let's walk through an example:

Imagine Venafi Platform detects a certificate nearing its renewal date. This is an event. This information is stored to the default channel. Additionally, the log server finds a notification rule that matches this event. The notification rule is linked to a specific SMTP channel, so the log server passes the information along to the linked SMTP channel.

The SMTP channel is an email notification channel. It uses templates, macros, and message settings to send an email notification to a specified recipient.

If the log server found multiple notification rules for the event, all matching rules would be triggered, and their linked channels would receive the information about the event to process based on their channel settings. So, if there is a matching notification rule tied to a File channel, the event log will be saved to a text file on the corresponding file system.

These are just a couple of examples. Venafi Platform supports several other types of channels for delivering event information based on your organizational needs.