Log management has cut costs and now routes diverse data to multiple destinations efficiently
What is our primary use case?
As a Splunk administrator, I was using Splunk for everything from collecting logs to filtering them and viewing whatever I required, including searching queries. The Splunk license was costing me millions of dollars, so I wanted a tool where input data I did not require could be transformed to churn out meaningful data that I actually needed, with only that data being ingested into Splunk. Cribl played a very important role in this regard. It not only helped me with cost optimization but also transformed the data, and it was user-friendly. I used to have a specific regex query on my indexers, but those were removed once I introduced Cribl. In that way, I am using Cribl for cost optimization.
My sources and destinations are now being taken care of, whereas before, if I wanted to route my data to any specific destination, I had to configure it manually on the Splunk side. With Cribl, one source can have multiple destinations, and it is all UI friendly. This helps me considerably.
My core purpose in using Cribl is to get insight into login logs, including user login, log out, and all those sorts of logs. I use it for that purpose and have never come across anything such as a firewall.
What is most valuable?
When managing log processing tasks, my experience with Cribl's user interface is extremely smooth, quick, and very user-friendly. If I want to monitor my incoming data, I just have to go to that specific panel and click on monitoring. I can capture the live logs and make minute changes just to view how my output would look without needing to do anything on the back end. In that way, I would say it is very user-friendly, covering most of the available standard sources and destinations without needing additional plugins. If I want to source CrowdStrike or integrate it with Kafka, all that is available right on the UI.
From my perspective, I like Cribl Edge very much. Until now, I had to collect the data using a universal forwarder as an agent installed on the source side, but with Cribl Edge, you do not require any installation. You simply set up the source on the Cribl Edge side, and it starts collecting the data. Unlike traditional forwarders where you have to manually install the agent, Cribl Edge simplifies that process. Cribl Stream is also one of the best features. If I want to perform any transformation, I can create multiple routes and perform operations on the incoming data based on my output configuration. I can have my login routes into specific dashboards based on transformations. I am using both Stream and Edge.
Cribl Edge's centralized fleet management has saved a lot of my time and effort and has also helped with cost optimization. As a core Splunk administrator, I used to manually install the Splunk universal forwarder on my source site. Since using Cribl Edge, I just set up my source and do some networking tweaks to include it in my parameters, and then the agent starts collecting the required logs for me without the traditional installation process.
What needs improvement?
I think Cribl should enhance its visualization side, similar to Splunk or Grafana, where things can be visualized more accurately or presentably. Adding features for trending data lines and predictive analysis would be a beneficial addition.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Cribl for probably more than a year, maybe around fifteen to sixteen months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Regarding stability and scalability, I have not faced any crashes, downtimes, or performance issues. I would rate it ten out of ten as it has been smooth overall. However, in tools like Splunk, you often have a free limit, but in Cribl, you need a production license to process anything.
How are customer service and support?
I am aware of Cribl's technical support. I can raise a case via email or use on-demand support. I am familiar with it but have not needed to reach out recently, though I am aware there is twenty-four seven support with a dedicated email ID.
I would rate the customer service or technical support team very high, around eight or nine. They are quick to respond, have a service-level agreement, and I have not encountered a time when it was breached. You can also provide your mobile number if something is urgent, and they will call you directly.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before choosing Cribl, I did not really evaluate other options. We were predominantly relying on Splunk, and aside from it, we relied on primitive AWS agents. Choosing Cribl as an independent tool offered a major advantage since it is platform-independent and can integrate with any cloud environment.
How was the initial setup?
My experience with the initial setup and deployment process was straightforward. Cribl provides training, including free certifications called Cribl University. Anyone without a background in data processing can go through those certifications to understand how to install and use Cribl for their cases. Since I come from a similar background, I faced no challenges.
What about the implementation team?
Everything was done in-house. My leadership took care of procurement, and we managed the deployment, creating the topology and using it by ourselves.
What was our ROI?
The return on investment with Cribl is huge. My enterprise would have ended up paying a lot of money for similar types of work before Cribl was introduced, so the return is quite good.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Regarding Cribl's pricing aspect, I find it very nominal. It seems to be a startup, and from an engineering enterprise perspective, it is price-friendly and not competitive. The price-to-benefit ratio shows high benefits compared to a comparatively low price.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I am using the software version, not working with it on the AWS cloud.
I bought the Cribl product directly from Cribl. I reached out to my leadership, and they facilitated getting the Cribl license and everything directly from cribl.io.
What other advice do I have?
Cribl handles high volumes of diverse data types, such as logs and metrics, very well. It is a stable platform; even with high input data ingestion, it does not slow down. My experience shows it is quite stable regardless of how large the amount of data being processed.
Cribl Search has helped me in a good way regarding long-term log retention and historical investigations. However, I have not explored that area much. My prime area was to reduce the costs associated with Splunk, which costs around seventy-five million dollars yearly due to many redundant logs. Cribl helped me filter those logs for cost optimization.
Unified management has absolutely helped me and saved me a lot of time. During situations concerning a major incident, I was able to get required results in less time, saving a lot of application downtime. Using Cribl on Kubernetes and Docker shows everything regarding the health of my underlying servers, making it easy to maintain. The core purpose I am using it for is cost optimization, and it has helped reduce incident time or downtime of my application, widely assisting me in areas where I needed it.
With Cribl Search's ability to search data in place, I can troubleshoot easily. I am using Cribl Stream with configured sources and destinations. If there is an error event, I can log in to the Cribl UI and type a query, such as the index name, to see all related events. It is helping me troubleshoot on the Cribl UI.
I do not think my wisdom or tech understanding is superior to offer advice. The tool itself is promising, but given the evolution of AI and similar technologies, it would be beneficial if Cribl could provide intelligent suggestions for configuration or search, similar to Visual Studio. I would rate this review an eight overall.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Centralized log control has improved normalization while pricing and UI still need refinement
What is our primary use case?
I have been working with Cribl for three years now. Cribl was introduced some time ago but has been recently highlighted in the market, and people in my firm started using it.
I lead an engineering domain in my firm, and I am leading almost six to seven projects, all of which have Cribl at this moment. Before Cribl, we used a syslog forwarder to forward third-party logs to our SIEM solution. In some cases, the SIEM solution is Sentinel, and in other cases, it is Splunk. We used the syslog forwarder to have these logs normalized and sent into the Sentinel workspace via syslog forwarder. However, once Cribl was introduced, we have seen several advantageous features that are not available in the syslog forwarder for normalization but are readily available in Cribl. Additionally, from the source end, we can perform filtration that was not possible before Cribl was available. Another advantage of Cribl is that we can customize the logs and tagging of the logs according to our needs. In summary, there is full control of logs coming from the source end when they are sent into our SIEM solution via Cribl. These three reasons are why we are using Cribl.
We are onboarding firewall logs into our environment using Cribl as well. There are no issues in implementing firewall logs or having those logs into the environment.
How has it helped my organization?
We are improving in terms of managing endpoints. We now have a dashboard in Cribl itself. This is improving our time management. However, we have created an internal dashboard on the Sentinel platform which we manage instead of using the Cribl dashboard. We have not leveraged that feature at this moment.
What is most valuable?
The valuable features are normalization, an easy graphical user interface, and the feature to have multiple pipelines for the same log source. The feature to have multiple pipelines is the most amazing feature of Cribl that I appreciate the most.
These features are beneficial because there are very few options in the market. The initial old school approach was syslog forwarder. Several other tools are available in the market, but those tools do not have as much control capability as Cribl provides. Additionally, Cribl is hosted on the cloud, and most products, solutions, and SIEM platforms nowadays are on the cloud as well. This creates a good integration between the products.
The deployment was smooth across all seven projects I have. Everything was in place, with documents and step-by-step guidance readily available. Cribl support is very good. Whenever we got stuck, we just needed to open a ticket, and the support team was very responsive and helped us get the deployment done quickly.
What needs improvement?
Cribl should enhance the homepage. The user interface is very simple, and you can see all your workers or worker groups on the homepage itself. However, a layman or someone jumping into the portal for the first time might get confused because they may not be aware of where their log sources are mapped or which worker group their log sources are mapped into. The homepage could be further simplified to address this confusion.
Cribl should work on enhancement of their graphical user interface. They definitely need to work on their pricing. If they address the costing aspect, they are the big players and have a bright scope in the market because they are doing very well. They should find alternative pricing models for small-size firms that want to utilize their features but cannot do so due to cost constraints.
Cribl should work on their turnaround time for support tickets. In my environment, we have AWS, Microsoft, Cribl, and GCP in some cases, so we have different SLAs for different tickets. For Cribl, a very low severity ticket has a turnaround time of almost around twenty-four hours. Even after twenty-four hours, if people follow up, they do respond, but sometimes they take a lot of time to respond even to very simple or small issues. They should improve that turnaround time.
I have heard from someone on LinkedIn that there is a limitation in Cribl, but I have not explored that myself, so I should not make definitive comments about it.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Cribl for three years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Cribl sometimes behaves unexpectedly, but this is rare. When log volumes are very high, Cribl workers or the servers behind Cribl start behaving weirdly. We have seen ingestion latency in the SIEM platform, and we have also observed sometimes a drop in the logs. Cribl is designed to deal with certain kinds of loads and is not designed to handle any scenario in the market. We need to be very careful when sending huge volumes of logs via Cribl to any SIEM platform.
How are customer service and support?
The turnaround time for support tickets needs improvement. In my environment, I have AWS, Microsoft, Cribl, and GCP in some cases, so I have different SLAs for different tickets. For Cribl, a very low severity ticket has a turnaround time of almost around twenty-four hours. Even after twenty-four hours, if people follow up, they do respond, but sometimes they take a lot of time to respond even to very simple or small issues. Cribl support should work on improving that turnaround time.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We previously used a syslog forwarder, which is not a tool but an old school methodology. We have now gotten rid of each syslog forwarder, and Cribl has taken over that responsibility.
How was the initial setup?
There are no challenges or complexity with the initial setup. Cribl is hosted on a server itself and is very easy to set up. It hardly takes two to three hours to complete the whole setup from beginning to end. It is not that complex. Documents are available on the internet as open source, and Cribl University has resources available as well. It hardly takes around three hours to get everything set up with all the process and approvals.
The deployment process across all seven projects was smooth. Everything was in place, with documents and step-by-step guidance readily available. Cribl support is very good. Whenever we got stuck, we just needed to open a ticket, and the support team was very responsive and helped us get the deployment done quickly.
What about the implementation team?
The documents were ready, and step-by-step guidance was available. Cribl support is very good. Whenever we got stuck, we just needed to open a ticket, and the support team was very responsive. They reached out to us and helped us get the deployment done very quickly if we got stuck somewhere.
What was our ROI?
Cribl is a huge investment for a firm like Deloitte. However, we do not have any other good solutions or good options in the market, so we do not have another option to choose from. I have already started exploring alternative solutions that are going to give a cheaper solution. However, we are also not going to compromise with quality. Vega is similar to Cribl and is something I have mentioned. From the ROI perspective, Cribl is a huge investment.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Cribl is a very costly product. The complexity is not an issue because it is very easy to understand. With Cribl University courses, a person who is very new to Cribl can easily grasp the content. Cribl itself has provided many resources on the marketplace that we can leverage. However, in terms of costing, Cribl is a very costly product. People nowadays have started considering alternative solutions. There is a tool called Vega in the market that was very recently introduced. We are also having POC sessions going on there. Cost-wise, Cribl is a costly tool, but complexity-wise, it is a very quick tool to adopt.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Vega is an alternative solution in the market that was very recently introduced, and we are having POC sessions with it.
When comparing both products, Cribl will definitely win in each aspect because we did a POC recently and did not find Vega to be as effective as Cribl. The only point where Vega is winning is in pricing terms. They have very attractive prices. However, we do not want to compromise with quality. Cribl is leading in each aspect. Vega is still lacking the basic things that Cribl already covers. Cribl is much more mature in the market now. Nobody stands very close to Cribl.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend Cribl to small-scale firms looking for this kind of solution. They should go through some documentation and videos, or they could set up some time with Cribl if they want. Cribl is a good product and tool in the market that can help with normalization, setup, and segregation of logs. However, the challenge people face is the cost. I am okay with this because my firm has a budget and can afford it. For small-scale sectors, I think Cribl needs to come up with one more pricing model, maybe with fewer features, but they should develop alternative pricing options.
Cribl Edge makes the environment very much managed. We have created multiple pipelines, and using those pipelines, we do not need to have any tagging done at the destination level. From the source level itself, within the pipeline, we can map the tags, and the logs are very much managed in the workspace itself. At times of audits and compliance, everything is managed there. It is helpful.
For the Cribl Search feature, I have seen log ingestion problems, latency issues, and sometimes the dropping of logs. Cribl Search comes into the picture to help us understand if we are missing something or having some latency in the logs. It shows us where we have a latency and which root cause is creating the problem, which server is creating the problem, and which worker group is creating the problem. Using Cribl Search makes it more effective for us.
The overall review rating for this product is seven out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)