This blog was originally published Sept. 24, 2021 on humio.com. Humio is a CrowdStrike Company.

From time to time, people ask us exactly what we mean when we say things like Humio lets you “stream live data” or Humio provides “real-time observability.” In this blog, we provide a high-level overview of traditional log management and explain some of the terms we use when explaining what makes Humio so powerful and unique compared to other solutions.

Legacy log management

Most businesses today rely on a diverse collection of compute, networking, security and software solutions supplied by different vendors and service providers. Security, IT and development professionals all rely on log data to ensure the performance, availability and security of this infrastructure. But examining discrete event logs individually is a manually-intensive, time-consuming and error-prone process. It’s nearly impossible to detect and resolve sophisticated security incidents or complex architectural issues with a siloed approach.

Most organizations simply can’t afford to gather and retain log data from all their networking gear, security products and other IT systems using SIEM solutions or conventional log management products. As a result, organizations have to limit the types of log records they collect or periodically age out log data, leaving security, IT and development staff in the dark.

Blind spots start to multiply, making it easy for malicious attackers to penetrate IT systems, traverse networks and avoid detection. Likewise, data gaps make it incredibly difficult for IT operations teams and developers to troubleshoot system performance problems and pinpoint application design issues. Because organizations can’t log everything, launching investigations of any kind becomes like looking for a needle in a haystack without knowing if the needle even exists.

Humio lets you log everything and answer anything in real time

Unlike conventional log management systems, Humio cost-effectively collects and analyzes unlimited data at any throughput, providing the full visibility needed to identify, isolate and resolve the most complex security, performance and reliability issues.

Most traditional log management vendors treat logging much like a general-purpose database, organizing and searching datasets using inefficient indexing techniques. Indexing introduces ingest and search latency, which impairs discoveries, observability and investigations. It also consumes excessive CPU and memory resources, adding hardware expense. Humio is based on an innovative index-free design that delivers extremely fast performance.

With Humio, businesses are no longer forced to make difficult decisions about which data to log and how long to retain it. By logging everything, Humio customers gain the complete visibility needed to detect and respond to any incident in real time.

Streaming observability explained

With that in mind, below are some of the phrases we use to describe Humio’s ability to log everything and answer anything.

When we say Humio lets you stream live data, we mean Humio ingests log data as quickly as it arrives, regardless of volume or throughput. We never drop or discard log data.

When we say Humio provides streaming observability, live observability or real-time observability with sub-second latency, we mean Humio lets you aggregate and visualize streaming log data in real time, so no matter what volume of data you send to Humio or how fast you send it, Humio processes it almost instantaneously. Humio updates alerts, scripts and dashboards in real time, giving you live visibility into the health and operations of your IT infrastructure.

Finally, when we say Humio provides blazing-fast free-text search, we mean Humio’s index-free design lets you search anything, in any field, with near-instantaneous results. Again, this is because of Humio’s index-free architecture, where data is compressed, creating gains of 50-100x in required disk space. With Humio, you can search 1PB of data in less than a second. This opens the door to incredible efficiency gains, including highly-effective incident response and prevention.

Wondering if Humio is right for you?

To learn more about how Humio’s live observability capabilities can reduce costs and improve performance, download our Total Cost of Ownership report. See how Humio can ingest over 1PB of streaming log data per day and help you massively reduce your operational expenses while providing real-time observability for security, development and IT operations professionals.

Additional Resources

• Blog: 10 Questions to ask a vendor when choosing a log management solution
• TCO report: Humio redefines log management Total Cost of Ownership
• Request a demo of Humio’s modern log management solution