Question 1

What's the difference between Centralized Logging and distributed tracing?

Accepted Answer

Centralized logging collects text or structured events (like errors, warnings, and audit events) from many systems into one place so you can search and analyze them. Distributed tracing follows a single request as it moves through multiple services using trace and span IDs, showing timing and dependencies. In practice, teams use both: logs explain what happened, traces show where time was spent and which service call failed.

Question 2

When should I use Centralized Logging?

Accepted Answer

Use it when you have more than one application, service, or environment and need a single place to troubleshoot, monitor errors, meet audit requirements, or create alerts. It becomes especially valuable with microservices, Kubernetes, autoscaling, multiple regions, or when instances are short-lived and local log files are hard to access.

Question 3

How much does Centralized Logging cost?

Accepted Answer

Cost usually depends on (1) log ingestion volume (GB/day), (2) retention duration, (3) query/analysis usage, and (4) data egress or cross-region transfers. Costs can rise quickly with verbose debug logs, high-cardinality labels, or long retention. Common cost controls include sampling, filtering at the collector, setting retention by log type (e.g., 7–30 days for debug, longer for audit), compressing/archiving to object storage, and using metrics derived from logs for alerting instead of querying raw logs constantly.

Centralized Logging

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