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Graylog pros and cons

Vendor: Graylog
4.0 out of 5
507 followers
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Pros & Cons summary

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Graylog offers message forwarding through an in-built module and provides the ability to write custom alerts for enhanced information security and compliance.
Users benefit from Graylog's Elasticsearch integration, enabling fast log retrieval and detailed searches across messages with full-text search capabilities.
Graylog's real-time UDP/GELF logging supports high performance, making it ideal for sending large volumes of logs with minimal overhead.
The platform allows seamless integration with existing tools like Slack and OpsGenie, enabling proactive user notification about errors and alerts.
Graylog is praised for its open-source nature, scalability, and stability, requiring minimal maintenance while providing significant infrastructure and security event visibility.

CONS

The Collector application complains about the architecture, especially avoiding Graylog Collector Sidecar.
Support for Elasticsearch tuning and running inside Kubernetes is lacking, making setup and performance optimization challenging.
Issues with Elasticsearch circuit-breaking due to large field data size caused instability, highlighting a need for minimum requirements from Graylog.
Technical support is inadequate without an enterprise license, complicating problem-solving for users.
The initial setup and configuring processing pipelines are complex due to insufficient documentation.
 

Graylog Pros review quotes

Andrey Mostovykh - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 27, 2022
What I like about Graylog is that it's real-time and you have access to the raw data. So, you ingest it, and you have access to every message and every data item you ingest. You can then build analytics on top of that. You can look at the raw data, and you can do some volumetric estimations, such as how big traffic you have, how many messages of data of a type you have, etc.
Peter Malaty - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 30, 2022
Everything stands out as valuable, including the fact that I can quantify and qualify the logs, create pipelines and process the logs in any way I like, and create charts or data maps.
it_user776922 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 22, 2017
The ability to write custom alerts is key to information security and compliance.
Learn what your peers think about Graylog. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Jonas Leeb - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 22, 2022
One of the most valuable features is that you are able to do a very detailed search through the log messages in the overview.
AK
Jan 27, 2025
It has data adapters and lookup tables that utilize HTTP calls to APIs.
AN
Aug 26, 2019
I am very proud of how very stable the solution is.
CN
Dec 7, 2020
Graylog's search functionality, alerting functionality, user management, and dashboards are useful.
it_user774168 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 16, 2017
Message forwarding through the in-built module.
Lokesh Puthalapattu - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 21, 2022
The best feature of Graylog is the Elasticsearch integration. We can integrate and we can run filters, such as an event of interest, and those logs we can send to any SIEM tool or as an analytic. Additionally, there are clear and well-documented implementation instructions on their website to follow if needed.
JC
Jan 23, 2018
We run a containerized microservices environment. Being able to set up streams and search for errors and anomalies across hundreds of containers is why a log aggregation platform like Graylog is valuable to us.
 

Graylog Cons review quotes

Andrey Mostovykh - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 27, 2022
The infrastructure cost is the main issue. I like the rest. If the infrastructure costs could be lower, it would be fantastic.
Peter Malaty - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 30, 2022
Graylog needs to improve their authentication. Also, the fact that Graylog displays logs from the top down is just ridiculous.
it_user776922 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 22, 2017
I would like to see a default dashboard widget that shows the topology of the clusters defined for the graylog install.
Learn what your peers think about Graylog. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Jonas Leeb - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 22, 2022
It would be great if Graylog could provide a better Python package in order to make it easier to use for the Python community.
AK
Jan 27, 2025
When it comes to configuring the processing pipeline, writing the rules can be very tedious, especially since the documentation isn't extensive on how the functions provided for these rules work.
AN
Aug 26, 2019
I would like to see a date and time in the Graylog Grok patterns so that I can save time when searching for a log. I like how the streams and the search query work, but adding a date and time will allow me to pull out a log in a milli-second.
CN
Dec 7, 2020
Graylog can improve the index rotation as it's quite a complex solution.
it_user774168 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 16, 2017
The biggest problem is the collector application, as we wanted to avoid using Graylog Collector Sidecar due to its architecture.
Lokesh Puthalapattu - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 21, 2022
Graylog could improve the process of creating rules. We have to create them manually by doing parses and applying them. Other SIEM solutions have basic rules and you can create and get more events of interest.
JC
Jan 23, 2018
Elasticsearch recommendations for tuning could be better. Graylog doesn't have direct support for running the system inside of Kubernetes, so it can be challenging to fill in the gaps and set up containers in a way that is both performant and stable.