Logstash plugin for log forwarding

Use our Logstash output plugin to connect your Logstash monitored log data to New Relic. Read on to learn how to enable this feature.

Compatibility and requirements

To forward your logs to New Relic using Logstash, you'll need:

A New Relic license key
Logstash 6.6 or higher
- Logstash requires Java 8 or Java 11. Use the official Oracle distribution or an open-source distribution such as OpenJDK.

To enable log management using Logstash:

To install the Logstash plugin, enter the following command into your terminal or command line interface:

logstash-plugin install logstash-output-newrelic

To configure your Logstash plugin:

In your logstash.conf file, add the following block of data. Be sure to replace the placeholder text with your New Relic license key.

output {
  newrelic {
    license_key => "LICENSE_KEY"
  }
}

Once you have installed and configured the Logstash plugin, you can use the following attributes to configure how the plugin sends data to New Relic:

Property	Description	Default value
`concurrent_requests`	The number of threads to make requests from.	`1`
`base_uri`	The New Relic ingestion endpoint.	US endpoint: `https://log-api.newrelic.com/log/v1` EU endpoint: `https://log-api.eu.newrelic.com/log/v1`
`max_retries`	Maximum number attempts to retry to send a message. If set to 0, no re-attempts will be made.	3

For more information on adding or configuring attributes, see Example Configurations for Logstash.

To test if your Logstash plugin is receiving input from a log file:

Add the following to your logstash.conf file:

input {
    file {
      path => "/PATH/TO/YOUR/LOG/FILE"
    }
}

Restart your Logstash instance.
Run the following command to append a test log message to your log file:
```
echo "test message" >> /PATH/TO/YOUR/LOG/FILE
```
Search New Relic Logs UI for test message.

If everything is configured correctly and your data is being collected, you should see data logs in both of these places:

New Relic Logs UI
New Relic tools for running NRQL queries. For example, you can execute a query like this:
```
SELECT * FROM Log
```

Now that you've enabled Logs, here are some potential next steps:

Explore your data using the Logs UI.
Configure your agent to see contextual log data, such as distributed tracing, stack traces, application logs, and more.
Query your data and create custom dashboards or alerts.

If no data appears after you enable New Relic Logs, follow the troubleshooting procedures.

If you need more help, check out these support and learning resources:

Browse the Explorers Hub to get help from the community and join in discussions.
Find answers on our sites and learn how to use our support portal.
Run New Relic Diagnostics, our troubleshooting tool for Linux, Windows, and macOS.
Review New Relic's data security and licenses documentation.