One recurring challenge in managing cloud environments is the tendency for lab and development instances to remain active long after they’re needed. While it might seem like a small oversight, the impact can be significant. These idle instances rack up unnecessary costs, drain valuable resources, and open the door to security vulnerabilities. Configuring effective monitoring to notify about the running instances is a good way to address this problem.
https://discoveredintelligence.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/cribl-search-to-monitor-gcp.jpeg6671000Anoop Ramachandranhttps://discoveredintelligence.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/DI-Logo1-300x137.pngAnoop Ramachandran2025-01-14 15:09:322025-01-15 13:45:56Using Cribl Search to Monitor Instances in Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
If your Cribl environment was set up a few years ago, it might be time to revisit some of your settings—particularly the Persistent Queue (PQ) settings on your source inputs. Recently, while troubleshooting an issue, I discovered that the PQ settings were the root cause of the problem. I wanted to share my findings in case they help you optimize your Cribl setup.
https://discoveredintelligence.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/persistent_queues.jpg6651000Terry Mulliganhttps://discoveredintelligence.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/DI-Logo1-300x137.pngTerry Mulligan2024-12-10 17:08:082024-12-11 18:32:18Beyond Smart: When ‘Always On’ Mode is the Best Choice for Cribl Persisent Queues
If you are like me when I started with Cribl, you will have plenty of Splunk knowledge but little to no Cribl experience. I had yet to take the training, had no JavaScript experience, and only had a basic understanding of Cribl, but I didn’t let that stop me and just dove in. Then I immediately struggled because of my lack of knowledge and spent countless hours Googling and asking questions. This post will list the information I wish I had possessed then, and hopefully make your first Cribl experience easier than mine.
Cribl Quick Reference Guide
If I could only have one item on my wish list, it would be to be aware of the Cribl Quick Reference Guide. This guide details basic stream concepts, performance tips, and built-in and commonly used functions.
Creating that first ingestion, I experienced many “how do I do this” moments and searched for hours for the answers, such as “How do I create a filter expression?” Generally, filters are JavaScript expressions essential to event breakers, routes, and pipelines. I was lost unless the filter was as simple as 'field' == 'value.' I didn’t know how to configure a filter to evaluate “starts with,” “ends with,” or “contains.” This knowledge was available in the Cribl Quick Reference Guide in the “Useful JS methods” section, which documents the most popular string, number and text Javascript methods.
Common Javascript Operators
Operator
Description
&&
Logical and
||
Logical or
!
Logical not
==
Equal – both values are equal – can be different types.
===
Strict equal – both values are equal and of the same type.
!=
Returns true if the operands are not equal.
Strict not equal (!==)
Returns true if the operands are of the same type but not equal or are of different kinds.
Greater than (>)
Returns true if the left operand is greater than the right operand.
Greater than or equal (>=)
Returns true if the left operand is greater than or equal to the right operand.
Less than (<)
Returns true if the left operand is less than the right operand.
Less than or equal (<=)
Returns true if the left operand is less than or equal to the right operand.
Regex
Cribl uses a different flavour of Regex. Cribl uses ECMAScript, while Splunk uses PCRE2. These are similar, but there are differences. Before I understood this, I spent many hours frustrated that my Regex code would work in Regex101 but fail in my pipeline.
Strptime
It’s almost identical to the version that Splunk uses, but there are a few differences. Most of my problems were when dealing with milliseconds. Cribl uses %L, while Splunk uses %3Q or %3N. Consult D3JS.org for more details on the strptime formatters.
JSON.parse(_raw)
When the parser function in a pipeline does not parse your JSON event, it may be because the JSON event is a string and not an object. Use an eval function with the Name as _raw and the Value Expression set to JSON.parse(_raw), which will convert the JSON to an object. A side benefit of JSON.parse(_raw) is that it will shrink the event’s size, so I generally include it in all my JSON pipelines.
Internal Fields
All Cribl source events include internal fields, which start with a double underscore and contain information Cribl maintains about the event. Cribl does not include internal fields when routing an event to a destination. For this reason, internal fields are ideal for temporary fields since you do not have to exclude them from the serialization of _raw. To show internal fields, click the … (Advanced Settings) menu in the Capture window and toggle Show Internal Fields to “On” to see all fields.
Event Breaker Filters for REST Collector or Amazon S3
Frequently, expressions such as “sourcetype=='aws:cloudwatchlogs:vpcflow‘” are used in an Event breaker filter, but sourcetype cannot be used in an Event Breaker for a REST Collector or an Amazon S3 Source. This is because this sourcetype field is set using the input’s Fields/Metadata section, and the Event Breaker is processed before the Field/Metadata section.
For a REST collector, use “__collectible.collectorId=='<rest collector id>'” internal field in your field expression, which the REST collector creates on execution.
One of Cribl Stream’s most valuable functions is the ability to effortlessly drop fields that contain null values. Within the parser function, you can populate the “Fields Filter Expression” with expressions like value !== null.
Some example expressions are:
Expression
Meaning
value !== null
Drop any null field
value !== null || value==’N/A’
Drop any field that is null or contains ‘N/A’
Once I obtained these knowledge nuggets, my Cribl Stream was more efficient. Hopefully, my pain will be your gain when you start your Cribl Stream journey.
https://discoveredintelligence.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/things_i_wish_i_knew_cribl.png532800Terry Mulliganhttps://discoveredintelligence.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/DI-Logo1-300x137.pngTerry Mulligan2024-07-08 13:00:002024-07-08 17:05:59Cribl Stream: Things I wish I knew before diving in
April marked the beginning of a new era for Cribl with the introduction of Cribl Lake, which brings Cribl’s suite of products full circle in the realm of data management. In this post we dive a bit deeper into some of the benefits and features of Cribl Lake.
https://discoveredintelligence.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/cribl-lake-1.png354553Discovered Intelligencehttps://discoveredintelligence.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/DI-Logo1-300x137.pngDiscovered Intelligence2024-06-06 16:21:352024-06-06 16:30:10Introducing the benefits and features of Cribl Lake
Cribl Stream provides a flexible way of storing full-fidelity raw data into low-cost storage solutions like AWS S3 while sending a reduced/filtered/summarized version into Analytical Platforms for cost-effectiveness. In this blog post, I’ll walk you through setting up Cribl workers on AWS ECS and implementing dynamic auto scaling for seamless scale-out and scale-in as the demand fluctuates.
https://discoveredintelligence.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/cribl-worker-ecs.jpg567999Anoop Ramachandranhttps://discoveredintelligence.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/DI-Logo1-300x137.pngAnoop Ramachandran2024-05-29 12:42:482024-05-29 14:40:05Deploying Cribl Workers in AWS ECS for Data Replay
In this blog we will talk about the processes and the options we have to collect the GCP events and we will see how to collect those in Splunk. In addition, we will even add integration with Cribl, as an optional step, in order to facilitate and optimize the process of information ingestion. After synthesizing all of this great information, you will have a great understanding of the available options to take, depending on the conditions of the project or team in which you work.
https://discoveredintelligence.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/gcp_splunk_spotlight.png400600Discovered Intelligencehttps://discoveredintelligence.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/DI-Logo1-300x137.pngDiscovered Intelligence2023-08-09 16:34:142023-08-29 01:04:31Building a Unified View: Integrating Google Cloud Platform Events with Splunk
Once you have embraced and grasped the power of Cribl Stream, “Reduce! Simplify!” will become your new mantra.
Here we list some of the best Cribl Stream resources available to get you started. Most of these resources are completely free! – money is not an obstacle when beginning your Cribl Stream journey, so keep reading and start learning today!
https://discoveredintelligence.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/getting_started_with_cribl.png582550Terry Mulliganhttps://discoveredintelligence.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/DI-Logo1-300x137.pngTerry Mulligan2023-02-23 15:20:382024-01-19 02:44:06Help Getting Started with Cribl Stream