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Syslog from Network Devices

Netdata ingests the syslog your network devices emit — configuration changes, authentication events, link state, hardware alarms — and stores it as structured logs you can search and filter alongside each device's metrics, topology, and traps.

How it reaches Netdata

Netdata does not listen for syslog directly. Your devices send syslog to an OpenTelemetry Collector with a syslog receiver, which parses each message (RFC 3164 or 5424), normalizes the fields, and forwards them to the Netdata Agent over OTLP; the Agent indexes them as structured OpenTelemetry logs for the Logs tab. Because the pipeline is the OpenTelemetry Collector, you can filter, transform, and enrich messages — or derive metrics from them — before they reach Netdata.

What you get

• Searchable device logs — by device, severity, facility, and message content.
• Alongside everything else — run the collector against the same Agent that polls the devices, and their logs sit beside their metrics, topology, and traps.
• Retained on your terms — write-ahead logs rotate and indexed files follow the retention limits you set.

Where to start

• Netdata publishes ready-to-use OpenTelemetry Collector configurations for syslog. The entry in this section walks through the collector configuration and what to expect in the Logs tab.