Understanding data portability for IBM Cloud Logs
Data portability involves a set of tools and procedures that enable customers to export the digital artifacts that are needed to implement similar workload and data processing on different service providers or on-premises software. It includes procedures for copying and storing the service customer content, including the related configuration that is used by the service to store and process the data, on the customer's own location.
Responsibilities
IBM Cloud services provide interfaces and instructions to guide the customer to copy and store the service customer content, including the related configuration, to their own selected location.
The customer is responsible for the use of the exported data and configuration for data portability to other infrastructures, which includes:
- The planning and execution for setting up alternative infrastructure on different cloud providers or on-premises software that provide similar capabilities to the IBM services.
- The planning and execution for the porting of the required application code on the alternative infrastructure, including the adaptation of customer's application code, deployment automation, and so on.
- The conversion of the exported data and configuration to the format that's required by the alternative infrastructure and adapted applications.
For more information about your responsibilities for IBM Cloud Logs, see Understanding your responsibilities when using IBM Cloud Logs.
Dependent services
IBM Cloud Logs interacts with the following IBM Cloud services. See the documentation for these services for data portability related to these services.
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IBM Cloud® Identity and Access Management for access control and service to service authorization.
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IBM Cloud Object Storage for data and metrics storage.
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IBM Cloud Event Notifications for notifications of triggered alerts.
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IBM Event Streams for IBM Cloud for streaming IBM Cloud Logs data to other tools.
Data export procedures
IBM Cloud Logs has three types of data that can be exported:
- Log data
- Metrics data
- Configuration data
Log and metrics data
IBM Cloud Logs log and metrics data is stored in two IBM Cloud Object Storage buckets.:
- Data bucket (log data)
- Metrics bucket (metrics data)
For information about exporting IBM Cloud Object Storage bucket data, see the IBM Cloud Object Storage documentation.
If IBM Cloud Logs is not configured with IBM Cloud Object Storage buckets, then log data is only flowing to the Priority insights pipeline. In this case, log data cannot be exported. If a metrics bucket is not configured, metrics data cannot be exported.
Configuration data
In addition, IBM Cloud Logs provides mechanisms to export settings and configurations that are used to process the customer's content.
| Configuration data | Export using |
|---|---|
| Custom dashboards | UI |
| Alerts | List API Get API |
Custom views [*] |
List API Get API |
| Folders (views) | List API Get API |
| Webhooks | List API Get API |
| Enrichments | List API |
| TCO policies | List API Get API |
| Parsing rules | List API Get API |
| Events to metrics | List API Get API |
| Data access rules | List API |
| Data usage metrics | List API |
[*] - Only public views can be exported.
Exported data formats
The exported data format depends on the type of exported data.
Log data format
IBM Cloud Logs log data is stored in IBM Cloud Object Storage buckets in parquet format.
Metrics data format
IBM Cloud Logs metrics data is stored in IBM Cloud Object Storage buckets as Prometheus index blocks.
Configuration data format
IBM Cloud Logs configuration data is exported in JSON format.
Data ownership
All exported data is classified as customer content. Apply the full customer ownership and licensing rights, as stated in the IBM Cloud Service Agreement.