Alerts - Monitoring and Notifications
Overview
Alerts in LogCentral help you proactively monitor your infrastructure by automatically notifying you when when we encounter a problem with your logs. Instead of constantly watching dashboards, you can configure alerts to keep you informed about critical events and patterns in your system.
This article focuses on alert configuration and management for monitoring your ingested logs. For information about tracking organization activity and changes, please refer to the Audit Logs article.
Understanding the Alert System
LogCentral's alert system works by continuously monitoring your log data and triggering notifications when predefined conditions are met. This allows you to:
Get alerts if logs stop reaching our servers
Receive timely notifications through your preferred channels
Reduce the need for manual log monitoring
Respond quickly to system events
Alert Configuration Basics
Accessing Alert Settings
To configure alerts for your locations, navigate to the location details page at /organizations/:orgId/locations/:locationId. This page provides comprehensive management tools for your location, including alert configuration options.
Key Components
The alert system integrates with several core features:
Location monitoring: Alerts are configured per location to monitor specific infrastructure components
Log filtering: Works alongside filter rules to focus on relevant log data
Storage tracking: Monitor storage usage and set alerts for capacity thresholds
Setting Up Notification Channels
Available Notification Methods
LogCentral supports multiple notification channels to ensure you receive alerts through your preferred communication tools:
Email notifications: Receive alerts directly in your inbox
In App notifications: Receive alerts in the LogCentral website
In the future we'd like to add:
Webhooks: Integrate with external systems and tools
Custom integrations: Connect with your existing monitoring infrastructure
Configuring Notification Preferences
When setting up notifications, consider:
Notification frequency: Configure how often you want to receive alerts for the same condition
Cooldown periods: The system includes notification tracking to prevent duplicate alerts within a specified timeframe
Recipient management: Define who should receive specific alert types
The system uses a model to track sent notifications and prevent duplicates during cooldown periods, ensuring you're not overwhelmed with repeated alerts for the same issue.
Managing Alerts Across Locations
Multi-Location Monitoring
For organizations with multiple locations, you can:
Get location-specific alerts
Get up organization-wide alerts
Alert History
The system maintains a history of triggered alerts, allowing you to:
Review past notifications
Analyze alert patterns
Identify recurring issues
Audit notification delivery
Permission-Based Access
Alert management respects your organization's permission structure:
Best Practices for Effective Alerting
Design Principles
Alert on symptoms, not causes: We focus on user-impacting issues rather than internal system states.
Prioritize actionability: Every alert should have a clear response action. If we forgot that, let us know
Avoid alert fatigue: Too many alerts reduce their effectiveness. We try to be selective about what triggers notifications.
Use appropriate severity levels: We distinguish between critical issues requiring immediate attention and informational alerts.