Best practices with managing log files on my server

Question

My system is generating log files, e.g. for apache, nginx, tomcat, and other things and they grow pretty fast. I am looking for best practice recommendations because there are so many options to configure things, I'd just as well learn from people with more experience than I have so far administering a server. Thanks.

Answer 1

To start with you should go back to your policies. What are you logging and how long do you need to store it? Do you have any requirements to erase logs?

We use a partially centralized logging solution based on syslog. Systems that can not log to the syslog server logs locally. We rotate logs daily and compress old logs. Old logs are regularly shipped to a centralized system for storage, freeing up space on the systems and simplifying digging in old logs. We are required to store some logs for at least 12 months, and in practice we store all logs for 12 months.