WebSphere Application Server 8.5.5 - High Performance Extensible Logging (HPEL)

IBM WebSphere Application Server V8.5 enhances the High Performance Extensible Logging (HPEL) feature that was first introduced in V8.0.

As the name suggests, HPEL was created to significantly outperform the existing application server logging and tracing mechanism
plus provide a powerful way to extend log and trace entries with extra fields.

Beyond that, HPEL provides a number of ease of use improvements for working with log and trace content.

Enabling HPEL is quick and easy, and does not require any code changes to your applications.

HPEL is a new log and trace content storage and access system for WebSphere Application Server. HPEL stores log and trace content produced by the existing log and trace APIs, in particular the java.util.logging API.

HPEL addressses a number of common needs:

• Log and trace performance
• Log and trace entry extensibility
• Automating log/trace analysis
• Application separation
• Request tracking
• Remote access to logs/trace

Source: System administration in WebSphere Application Server V8.5, Part 3: High Performance Extensible Logging (HPEL)

In short, HPEL moves away from the traditional WAS logging mechanism - SystemOut.log, SystemErr.log etc. - and creates a log repository, and a potentially much better way to interact with the logs, either via a GUI ( part of the Integrated Solutions Console ) or a command-line tool ( see below for both examples ).

This is how HPEL looks: -

This is how one configures HPEL: -

and this is how one uses the LogViewer tool in the event that one doesn't like a GUI :-)

$ /opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/bin/logViewer.sh -repositoryDir /opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/profiles/AppSrv01/logs/server1/ -minLevel AUDIT -maxLevel WARNING

returning: -

...

[25/06/14 13:58:00:056 BST] 00000001 WsServerImpl  A   WSVR0001I: Server server1 open for e-business
[25/06/14 13:58:01:155 BST] 00000051 FfdcProvider  W com.ibm.ws.ffdc.impl.FfdcProvider logIncident FFDC1003I: FFDC Incident emitted on /opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/profiles/AppSrv01/logs/ffdc/server1_95c0b25b_14.06.25_13.58.00.9331624778189943296603.txt com.ibm.ws.management.event.PushRemoteSender.pushNotifications 61
...