Enhanced Visibility Without Complexity
In today’s hybrid IT environments, where mainframes, cloud, and distributed systems must work seamlessly together, achieving unified log management is critical. Mainframes generate vast amounts of console messages, event logs, and SMF records, which are essential for operational visibility, compliance, and security. However, many traditional log management solutions, including Elastic, often lack native support for mainframe data, leading to data silos and inefficient workflows.
That’s where VirtualZ Computing’s PropelZ™ comes in. Offering seamless mainframe log integration, PropelZ simplifies the process of capturing, processing, and integrating mainframe logs — such as console messages — into Elastic Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) and other modern log management tools. With a no-code approach, PropelZ ensures that mainframe logs are easily searchable, actionable, and integrated into your broader IT ecosystem for maximum visibility and efficiency.
Why Integrate Mainframe Logs with Elastic?
Mainframe logs play a crucial role in IT operations, compliance, and security. Integrating them with Elastic enables enterprises to:
- Enhanced Monitoring: Detect performance bottlenecks, security breaches, and system failures as they happen.
- Improve Compliance and Auditability: Maintain detailed records of system activity to meet regulatory requirements.
- Enhance Cross-Platform Visibility: Gain a unified, centralized view of operational data across mainframes, cloud, and distributed environments.
By integrating Elastic with mainframe logs, organizations benefit from:
- A centralized log repository that consolidates logs from all IT environments.
- The ability to leverage Elastic’s analytics, search, and alerting capabilities for mainframe data.
- Simplified troubleshooting with real-time access to event logs and console messages.
How PropelZ Simplifies Mainframe Log Integration with Elastic
- Enhanced Log Capture: PropelZ captures console messages, SMF records, and other system logs as they occur, ensuring no critical event is missed.
- Data Transformation and Enrichment: PropelZ processes logs to align with Elastic’s ingest formats, adding metadata such as timestamps, log sources, and severity levels.
- Seamless Integration: PropelZ pushes logs directly to Elasticsearch using Logstash, Beats, or API ingestion, making them searchable and indexable.
Step-by-Step Process for Using PropelZ with Elastic
- Configure Elastic Integration: Set up PropelZ to send log data to Elastic using Logstash, Beats, or HTTP API ingestion.
- Capture Mainframe Logs: Deploy PropelZ on z/OS to collect console messages, SMF data, and system logs in real time.
- Transform and Enrich Logs: PropelZ formats, structures, and enriches mainframe logs for structured analysis in Elastic.
- Visualize and Automate: Use Kibana dashboards to interact with your logs, visualize key metrics, and configure alerts.
Benefits of PropelZ for Elastic Integration
- No-Code Simplicity: PropelZ automates log capture, transformation, and integration without requiring manual coding.
- Enhanced Visibility: Provides instant access to mainframe logs in Elastic for proactive monitoring, troubleshooting, and security.
- Scalability: Handles large log volumes efficiently, ensuring log management performance keeps pace with business growth.
- Cost Efficiency: Uses zIIP processors to reduce mainframe resource consumption and overall IT costs.
- Cross-Platform Consistency: Bridges the gap between mainframe systems and modern log management platforms.
Practical Applications
- Operational Monitoring: Integrate mainframe logs with Elastic to monitor system health, detect anomalies, and prevent failures in real time.
- Compliance and Security Audits: Store and analyze historical console messages and SMF data to meet compliance requirements.
- Event-Driven Automation: Automate responses to critical system events, such as triggering alerts for security threats or system errors.
Conclusion
With PropelZ, integrating mainframe logs into Elastic Stack is seamless, efficient, and cost-effective. PropelZ eliminates the need for manual log extraction, Change Data Capture (CDC), and complex ETL processes, enabling organizations to achieve real-time monitoring, compliance, and security without unnecessary complexity.
If you’re ready to transform your mainframe log integration and maximize the value of Elastic, PropelZ provides the ideal solution.
Next Steps
- Watch the webinar Unlock Mainframe Observability — Fast and Secure with PropelZ.
- Schedule a PropelZ briefing.
- Watch a demo of PropelZ.
- Try PropelZ.
Learn More
- Visit our Customer Briefing Center.
- Review all VirtualZ Use Cases, Thought Leadership papers, and Solution Briefs.
- Explore our YouTube channel, podcasts, and blog.
- Still have questions? Contact us.