Routing

Routing is a core feature that allows to route your data through Filters and finally to one or multiple destinations.

Routing - 图1

There are two important concepts in Routing:

  • Tag
  • Match

When the data is generated by the input plugins, it comes with a Tag (most of the time the Tag is configured manually), the Tag is a human-readable indicator that helps to identify the data source.

Now to define where the data should be routed, a Match rule is assigned in the configuration.

Consider the following configuration example that aims to deliver CPU metrics to an Elasticsearch database and Memory metrics to the standard output interface:

  1. [INPUT]
  2.     Name cpu
  3.     Tag  my_cpu
  5. [INPUT]
  6.     Name mem
  7.     Tag  my_mem
  9. [OUTPUT]
  10.     Name   es
  11.     Match  my_cpu
  13. [OUTPUT]
  14.     Name   stdout
  15.     Match  my_mem

Note: the above example aim to demonstrate in a simplified way how Routing is configured.

Routing works automatically reading the Input Tags and the Output Match rules. If some data have a Tag that don’t have a match upon routing time, the data is deleted.

Routing with Wildcard

Routing is flexible enough to support wildcard in the Match pattern. The below example defines a common destination for both sources of data:

  1. [INPUT]
  2.     Name cpu
  3.     Tag  my_cpu
  5. [INPUT]
  6.     Name mem
  7.     Tag  my_mem
  9. [OUTPUT]
  10.     Name   stdout
  11.     Match  my_*

The match rule is set to my_* which means it will match any Tag that starts with my_.