fluentd

Best Practices

• Use <source> directives for each log input with appropriate plugin (tail, forward, http, syslog)
• Apply <filter> directives for parsing, enrichment, and transformation before output
• Configure <buffer> with file type for reliable delivery in production (never use memory buffer for critical logs)
• Use tag-based routing with <match> directives and wildcard patterns (**, app.*, etc.)
• Set pos_file for every tail input to track read positions across restarts
• Enable retry with exponential backoff for all output plugins (retry_max_interval, retry_forever)
• Use record_transformer filter for adding metadata fields (hostname, environment, service)
• Use @label routing for complex pipelines to avoid tag collision and improve readability