MuleSoft – Splunk Integration

Mulesoft & Splunk Enterprise is a software solution that enables searching, analyzing, and visualizing the data collected from your IT infrastructure or business. Splunk Enterprise collects information from a variety of sources, including websites, apps, sensors, and devices. Upgrade the Splunk skills with this online Splunk training course and master the concepts like Splunk basics, administration, development, configuration files, search engine, creating, Splunk commands searching, and others.
MuleSoft’s integration platform
MuleSoft’s integration platform helps organizations to not only unlock data from legacy systems, cloud apps, and devices but also to make smarter and faster decisions and provide end-users with highly connected experiences. Salesforce’s Integration Cloud now includes MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform. Master the skills on MuleSoft by pursuing the certification on Mulesoft with this Mulesoft training by learning the concepts like mule4 basics, integration techniques in AnyPoint studio, which assists to perform tests, debug, deploy and manage the MuleSoft apps, learning to detect the IT industry problems, learning the usage of data weave operators, etc.
Let us now go through the Splunk integration in MuleSoft which pushes the mule application and platform logs to Splunk.
Mulesoft to the Splunk Push application logs
Monitoring and resolving difficulties, and also any production faults or data visualization, require logging. Logging should be consistent and dependable so that we could use it to find relevant data. Splunk and ELK are two external logging tools.
MuleSoft’s logging system is used to store application logs. Despite the fact that CloudHub contains a 100 MB log limit or logs within 30 days. Typically, the blog discusses the Integration of MuleSoft Splunk.
It is critical for having an analytics tool for external logs to further track the application for a robust logging process.
MuleSoft using the HTTP
Today, we’ll use Splunk as a tool for external logging, and we’ll integrate it with a MuleSoft using the HTTP appender for Log4j2 to deliver logs of the mule application to Splunk. On both On-Premise and Cloud Hub, Splunk logging could be enabled.
First and foremost, with Splunk, we must establish a token.
1) Navigate to Settings -> then “Data” -> and then “Data Inputs”.
2) Navigate to Settings -> then “Data” -> then “Data Inputs” -> and then “New Token”.
3) After selecting New Token, select Collector of HTTP Events, and Log4j should be added as a source, as we would be delivering log4j logs to Splunk
4) You will receive a token value once you have completed all of the steps. HTTP Appender configuration in the log4j file for connecting the Splunk follows the next step.
5) When you’ve finished creating the token, go for global settings and enable it. This token could also be configured with SSL and a port. The numeric 8088 value is set by default.
6) In the mule application, include the following lines of code to log4j2.xml. If a URL is HTTPS, we can also use SSL.
7) JSON logs are recommended for improved monitoring and log analysis. We could include log information or utilize JSON logs in a JSON format for this purpose. Here’s a sample of the code for an application that would send logs for Splunk.
8) You’ll notice logs streaming to Splunk as soon as you launch the app. Select the option “Search and Monitoring” to see if this is the case.
9) Then, under “Data Summary,” select “Source Types,” search for a Log4j (look at Step 3) and choose log4j.
10) You may look at the logs pushing to Splunk after you select that option.
MuleSoft Anypoint to Splunk Push Platform logs
The process to send the Anypoint Platform logs of MuleSoft (CloudHub) is slightly different. CloudHub’s default logging technique is used. We should be making specific changes for a log4j file to override CloudHub’s default log4j set up in order to use our logging. The steps that must be followed are listed below.
1) For disabling logs from the CloudHub application, submit a support ticket to MuleSoft. After that, you’ll be able to disable logs at the runtime during application deployment by selecting “Disable Application Logs”.
- Next, modify the file “log4j2.xml” in a mule application to include CloudHub log appenders.
A file “log4j2” with an appender for custom cloudhub is an example.
- The log4j2 configuration that we prepared will be used once the application is deployed to MuleSoft Anypoint Platform CloudHub and CloudHub logs are disabled.
Processing the real-time order with Splunk integration
Splunk is a firm that creates enterprise software that makes machine data accessible, usable, and valuable to anybody. Splunk has experienced one of the quickest rates of growth among technology firms. The organization needed a technology platform for agility to support this continuous development at scale – a platform that would allow them to move quickly while avoiding risk.
Challenge
To support early expansion, Splunk leveraged cloud technologies such as Salesforce for sales, NetSuite for finance, and other custom applications, including one for fulfillment. To handle data flow between their systems and for an order fulfillment process across their sales, finance, and fulfillment teams, they deployed a data extraction, transformation, and loading tool (ETL). However, the ETL tool, like most ETL systems, was a black box, making it difficult for Splunk’s engineers and IT team to support and drive innovation swiftly.
It lacked open access, data visibility, and a robust developer community that might aid Splunk in optimizing operations, enabling rapid application development, and identifying efficiency bottlenecks.
Splunk’s various platforms
The solution also lacked adapters for quickly connecting Splunk’s various platforms, as well as an open cloud-based SOA or IDE. It necessitated the use of an on-premises hosting agent, which hindered the IT team from administering and updating the cloud platform, limiting their authority over their own data. The system also processed orders in 15-minute cycles rather than in real-time, slowing down the process.
Christopher Nelson, Senior Director of Business Applications at Splunk, felt compelled to overcome their rising integration difficulties as the end-of-year order fulfillment crisis neared.
Conclusion:
In this blog, we have learned and understood Splunk in MuleSoft and why MuleSoft integration is necessary. We have also gone through the steps to integrate MuleSoft with Splunk by exploring application and platform logs. We also have seen the challenges in processing the real-time order with Splunk integration.