• Category Archives Log Insight
  • Log Insight: Content Pack for Synology DSM

    Logging is a critical component of a an IT infrastructure. Almost all products have logs that give you valuable data. I think logs and analytics of those logs are all too often an overlooked part of ongoing operations.  The logs themselves are full of data but only useful if they are looked at analyzed.

    Products like VMware Log Insight, Splunk and others can give you insight into this data and logs to isolate issues and find quick resolutions and consolidate information across multiple products.

    I am a big fan of Synology NAS units, I have a small 2 bay Synology in my lab and have been working with Log Insight for a while now. Using Log Insight, I can have my logs from Synology DSM sent directly to my VMware Log Insight Appliance.

    Let’s take a look at the setup. Its actually very easy to set up.

    First we will add the content pack to Log Insight.

      1. Navigate to the Log Insight Login page either via name or IP address. Log into Log Insight appliance.

      2. In the upper right corner, click the menu button as shown in the screenshot. -> Click Content Packs

      3. Click Marketplace on the Left Hand Menu Under Content Pack MarketPlace

      4. Find Synology DSM Content Pack – You may have to scroll down, take a look through all of the available content packs as you may have other products that have content packs available.
      Click Synology DSM – A Pop Up will open in page

      5. Click Install on the Synology DSM Content Pack as shown below.
      6. You will get a notification that Synology DSM Content Pack has been installed.
      Next you will need to set up your Synology to send logs to the VMware Log Insight Appliance.
      7. Log into your Synology Web Manager GUI
      8. Click the Synology Main Menu in the upper Right hand corner

       9. Click the Log Center Icon

      10. Click Log Sending on the left hand menu and enter the IP or name of your Log Insight appliance. I chose IP for my lab.

      11. Your Synology should now be sending logs to your Log Insight appliance. It may take a few minutes to start seeing data in the Dashboards.

      12. Log into Log Insight – Click on Dashboards. Using the drop down menu on the left as shown in the screenshot below, click Synology DSM under Content Pack Dashboards

      I decided in order to show some data to throw some bad logins into my Synology. You can see those represented by the light blue, dark blue logins were a success.

      I will dive more into this and other content packs as well as more advanced functions and features in a future post.


    1. VMware Log Insight 1.5 is now Generally Available (GA)

      VMware announced yesterday (Jan 7th) that Log Insight 1.5 is now GA. I blogged about Log Insight a while back here. You should read that for some detailed information. I have been using the product in my lab for some time and believe this could be a powerful product and the vendors and partners are building some great content packs for this product.


      VMware vCenter Log Insight delivers automated log management through
      aggregation, analytics and search, enabling operational intelligence and
      enterprise-wide visibility in dynamic hybrid cloud environments.


      VMware Product Page
      VMware vCenter Log Insight Community – Great resource
      VMware Blog on Release

      New Features in 1.5

      • Enterprise Readiness
        • Active Directory Support
        • Query Performance Optimization
        • Query Scheduling
        • Better support for vSphere & vC Ops
      • Analytics
        • Richer Visualizations
        • Scales to 1000s of fields
        • Field Auto-complete Query
        • Columnar Event View
        • Content Pack Framework
      • Platform & Usability Improvements
        • Improved Health Monitoring
        • Auto-sized Virtual Appliance
        • Simple Upgrades

      Content Packs – Extend your log analytics and monitoring to third party vendors. Currently there are 12 available content packs as of today with more more on the way.

      Content packs enable users to consume unstructured data from a wide variety of sources while providing insights to more precisely and accurately identify and troubleshoot issues in dynamic virtual and cloud environments.

      Available Content Packs (as of 01/08/2013)

      • VCE Vision Intelligent Operations
      • Netflow Logic
      • NetApp ONTAP
      • HyTrust Appliance
      • Puppet Enterprise
      • VMware Horizon View 
      • EMC VMAX
      • vCOPS
      • ExtraHop Wire Data
      • Cisco UCS 
      • EMC VNX
      • vSphere