Before you begin

With this extension, you can create a dashboard designed to visualize and analyze logs from the IBM Cloud Databases for PostgreSQL service. The dashboard lets you track database performance, detect errors, analyze SQL queries, and provides insights to optimize system operations. The dashboard focuses on database stability and improving the efficiency of the database.

In IBM Cloud Logs, logs that are generated by IBM Cloud services (known as platform logs) include metadata fields that you can use to enhance searches and analyze the data.

• applicationName: The application name is the environment that produces and sends logs to IBM Cloud Logs. It is set to ibm-platform-logs.
• subsystemName: The subsystem name is the service or application that produces and sends logs to IBM Cloud Logs. It is set to database-for-postgresql:<instanceID> where <instanceID> is the IBM Cloud Databases for PostgreSQL instance ID.

In IBM Cloud, you must configure IBM Cloud Logs Routing to route logs to the IBM Cloud Logs service.

Before you can monitor logs that are generated in an IBM Cloud account, you must configure the IBM Cloud Logs Routing service in the account to define the destination where you want to monitor the logs.

• You can configure 1 or more IBM Cloud Logs instances in the account.
• Platform logs generated in the region are routed to the IBM Cloud Logs instance configured in IBM Cloud Logs Routing. The IBM Cloud Logs instance can be in the same region, or in a different region, in the account.
• You must define a service to service authorization between IBM Cloud Logs Routing and IBM Cloud Logs to grant permissions to the IBM Cloud Logs Routing service to send logs to the IBM Cloud Logs service.

For more information, see:

• Getting started with IBM Cloud Logs Routing
• IBM Cloud Databases for PostgreSQL logging

What this extension deploys

This extension includes one or more items.

Before deploying this extension, make sure that deploying the extension will not cause you to exceed limits for your IBM Cloud Logs instance. If deploying the extension results in limits being exceeded, the deployment will fail.

Deploying the extension

You can deploy this extension in any IBM Cloud Logs instance that collects IBM Cloud Databases for PostgreSQL logs. This extension includes a set of pre-configured resources such as dashboards, views, and alerts that help you monitor critical metrics, identify anomalies, and optimize your system's performance.

For more information about deploying the extension, see Deploying, managing, and removing IBM Cloud Logs extensions.

After deploying, verify that the extension configuration handles data in a way that matches your IBM Cloud Logs instance configuration. For example, if you have TCO policies sending data to the Analyze and alert pipeline, you will need to change the dashboard configured by this extension to All Logs instead of Priority insights.

Dashboard

One dashboard is provided providing data about IBM Cloud Databases for PostgreSQL logs including:

• Total log count
• Logs by severity
• Log trend over time
• The most frequent SQL queries
• The log stream: the stream of raw PostgreSQL logs, showing the timestamp, message, and subsystem

Alert

You can deploy the following alert:

• No logs are received from the service: No logs have been received from the PostgreSQL service, indicating potential issues with logging configuration, service downtime, or connectivity problems affecting log transmission.

Rules

You can deploy any of the following rules:

• Extract SQL Statement: Extracts the SQL statement from the log message.
• Replace message text to avoid mapping exceptions: Replaces the message text to avoid mapping exceptions by renaming problematic messages keys.
• Replace password to SENSITIVE data: Replaces the password with the string SENSITIVE to protect sensitive information.
• Extract SQLCode, SQLApp: Extracts the database SQLCode (SQL error codes) and SQLApp (originating application name) from the logs message.
• Extract DBUser, DBName, ClientIP: Extracts the database DBUser (user), DBName (database name), and ClientIP (client IP address) data from the log message for auditing and analysis.
• Extract log message type: Identifies the type or category of the log message. For example, ERROR or WARNING.