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Parse Severity [Ent]

Note
This feature is available as an add-on for the Honeycomb Enterprise plan. Please contact your Honeycomb account team for details.
Metrics Logs Traces Telemetry Pipeline Agent
- ✓ - v1.36.0+

Description 

The Parse Severity Processor is designed to normalize severity fields in log data into user-defined values, enhancing the consistency and readability of log data. By allowing users to map existing severity values to standard levels, it aids in the uniform analysis and visualization of logs across varied sources.

Use 

The processor is essential in environments where logs from different sources use varied severity naming conventions. By mapping these diverse severity indicators to standard values, it ensures that the severity data remains consistent, making it easier to filter, analyze, and generate insights from the log data.

Configuration 

Field Description
Condition An OTTL condition that must evaluate to true for the processor to be applied to the logs, allowing selective processing of entries.
Match Specifies the location of the severity value in the log entry: body, resource, or attributes.
Severity Field The specific field that contains the severity value to be parsed and normalized.
Trace A list of values that ‘TRACE’ severity should be mapped to.
Debug A list of values that ‘DEBUG’ severity should be mapped to.
Info A list of values that ‘INFO’ severity should be mapped to.
Warn A list of values that ‘WARN’ severity should be mapped to.
Error A list of values that ‘ERROR’ severity should be mapped to.
Fatal A list of values that ‘FATAL’ severity should be mapped to.

Example Configurations 

Available Parsing Formats 

In addition to simple string matching, this processor supports some unique value mapping options. For example, HTTP status code ranges can easily be assigned using notation such as 2xx, seen below. Available HTTP status code ranges include 1xx, 2xx, 3xx, 4xx, and 5xx.

Honeycomb Docs - Parse Severity - HTTP Status Range

Another unique value mapping is a range of numbers, such as 8-12. This will map any number in that range, such as 9, to the log level this range is assigned to.

Honeycomb Docs - Parse Severity - Number Range

Normalize Severity Levels in Log Data 

In this example, the Parse Severity Processor is configured to normalize severity levels from the “level” field in the log body into user-defined standard levels.

Honeycomb Docs - Parse Severity - image 1

Here is a sample log entry:

Body:

{
  "message": "An error occurred during processing",
  "level": "err"
}

The objective is to map the “err” severity level to a standard “error” level for consistency across all log entries. The configuration for the Parse Severity Processor is as follows:

  • Condition: "true" (applies to all logs)

  • Log Body, Resource, or Attributes: Body

  • Severity Field: level

  • Severity Mappings:

    {
  "err": "error",
  "warning": "warn",
  "information": "info",
  "debugging": "debug",
  "critical": "fatal"
}

With this setup, when the log entry is processed, the “severity” field is updated as follows:

Log After Processing:

{
  "severity": "error"
}

The severity level “err” is now normalized to “error,” allowing for a uniform representation of severity levels across all log entries. This normalization facilitates more straightforward log analysis, filtering, and alerting, especially when dealing with logs from multiple sources with different severity naming conventions.

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