Develop a Cloud Computing Error Logging Strategy
June 7, 2011 No CommentsError handling is such a pedestrian issue, you take it for granted. Same thing with transaction and trace logs – these are just so obvious. In a simple virtualization cloud (e.g., a MySQL server) you can take low-level error logging for granted at several layers of the software stack.
But that doesn’t mean you can take persistence of those logs for granted. Your logs may be wiped out if you didn’t configure the VM properly, or if you didn’t pay your cloud hosting provider to persist the logs if the VM crashes. Without those server-side logs, your troubleshooting is set back several hours, if not days. In unattended systems, the lack of persistent logs becomes a serious issue, and there are good forensic reasons why you’ll want to archive logs for long periods. So don’t skimp here.