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How do the Windows Edge Nodes extract Windows Event logs and forward them to Cribl?

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Nick Kwiecien Nick Kwiecien
edited September 2023 in Edge

Hi Team, quick question. How do the Windows Edge Nodes extract Windows Event logs and forward them to Cribl? Does it spin a powrshell process and send logs up in batches?

Answers

  • Brendan Dalpe
    Brendan Dalpe Posts: 201 mod
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    Yes, it does. We leverage native PowerShell utilities to export the Windows logs.

  • Chris Rogers
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    My understanding is that Edge collects the logs in batches using the `Get-WinEvent` powershell command

  • Chris Rogers
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    ooh, I see Brendan answered already!

  • Got it. How frequent is the batching process?

  • Chris Rogers
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    Uh, I believe in order to reduce some overhead, we queue up all commands (for a particular collection) at once to prevent us overloading powershell processes. Not sure of the exact frequency though

  • I see there's a polling interval that can be modified. That would change how frequent the batching happens, right?

  • Chris Rogers
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    Oh duh, yeah probably. I think the polling period is when the all the powershell commands are executed. I just reviewed some internal architectural docs on Windows Event collection with Edge and the doc seems to indicate the polling interval is when the batching happens

  • Brendan Dalpe
    Brendan Dalpe Posts: 201 mod
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    Yes, you can customize the polling interval. Just note that if you poll too frequently, you could be duplicating events because the previous one could still be running.

  • Is 10 seconds too frequent? That is the default

  • Brendan Dalpe
    Brendan Dalpe Posts: 201 mod
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    Shouldn't be

  • pdugas
    pdugas Posts: 14 mod
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    Depends on the batch size and how many logs are in there that it's trying to catch up on. And there's not much directly useful logging to be able to see what's really going on. Best I can offer is test and see but know that we are actively working to get more observability data about ourself to support tuning.