These docs are for Cribl Edge 4.12 and are no longer actively maintained.

See the latest version (4.13).

New Relic Logs & Metrics Destination

Cribl Edge supports sending events to the New Relic Log API and the New Relic Metric API.

Type: Streaming | TLS Support: Yes | PQ Support: Yes

In Cribl Edge 3.1.2 and newer, this Destination now authenticates using New Relic’s Ingest License API key. (New Relic will retire the Insights Insert API keys, which this Destination previously used for authentication.)

Also in v.3.1.2 and newer, Cribl Edge provides a separate New Relic Events Destination that you can use to send ad hoc (loosely structured) events to New Relic via the New Relic Event API.

Within New Relic’s platform, you can monitor Cribl Edge’s performance and data flow by installing New Relic’s Cribl dashboard.

Configure Cribl Edge to Output to New Relic

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1. On the top bar, select Products, and then select Cribl Edge. Under Fleets, select a Fleet. Next, you have two options:

   • To configure via QuickConnect, navigate to Routing > QuickConnect (Stream) or Collect (Edge). Select Add Destination and select the Destination you want from the list, choosing either Select Existing or Add New.
   • To configure via the Routes, select Data > Destinations or More > Destinations (Edge). Select the Destination you want. Next, select Add Destination.

2. In the New Destination modal, configure the following under General Settings: Output ID: Enter a unique name to identify this New Relic definition. If you clone this Destination, Cribl Edge will add -CLONE to the original Output ID.

   • Description: Optionally, enter a description.
   • Region: Select which New Relic region endpoint to use. Select Custom to manually enter your New Relic region’s URL if it’s not listed.

3. Under Authentication, select an Authentication method from the dropdown:

   If an incoming event contains an internal field named __newRelic_apiKey, the New Relic Logs & Metrics Destination uses that field’s value as the API key when sending the event to New Relic.

   For events that do not contain an __newRelic_apiKey field, the Destination uses whatever API key you have configured in the Authentication method settings.

   • Manual: This default option exposes an API key field. Directly enter your New Relic Ingest License API key, as you created or accessed it from New Relic’s account drop-down. (For details, see the New Relic API Keys documentation.)

   • Secret: This option exposes an API key (text secret) drop-down, in which you can select a stored secret that references a New Relic Ingest License API key. A Create link is available to store a new, reusable secret.

4. Next, you can configure the following Optional Settings:

   • Log type: Name of the logType to send with events. For example, observability or access_log.

     This sets a default. Where a sourcetype is specified in an event, it will override this value.

   • Log message field: Name of the field to send as the log message value. If not specified, the event will be serialized and sent as JSON.
   • Fields: Additional fields to (optionally) add, as Name-Value pairs. Click Add Field to add more. For details, see [Fields]{#fields}
   • Backpressure behavior: Select whether to block, drop, or queue events when all receivers are exerting backpressure. (Causes might include a broken or denied connection, or a rate limiter.) Defaults to Block. For the Persistent Queue option, see the section just below.
   • Tags: Optionally, add tags that you can use to filter and group Destinations on the Destinations page. These tags aren’t added to processed events. Use a tab or hard return between (arbitrary) tag names.

5. Optionally, you can adjust the Persistent Queue, Processing, Retries, and Advanced settings outlined in the sections below.

6. Select Save, then Commit & Deploy.

Fields

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These custom fields allow you to enrich your log data with specific details that are relevant to your use case. Click Add Field for more.

• Name: Enter the field name.

• Value:JavaScript expression to compute field’s value, enclosed in single quotes, double quotes, or backticks. (Can evaluate to a constant.)

Persistent Queue Settings

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The Persistent Queue Settings tab displays when the Backpressure behavior option in General settings is set to Persistent Queue. Persistent queue buffers and preserves incoming events when a downstream Destination has an outage or experiences backpressure.

Before enabling persistent queue, learn more about persistent queue behavior and how to optimize it with your system:

• About Persistent Queues
• Optimize Destination Persistent Queues (dPQ)
• Destination Backpressure Triggers

On Cribl-managed Cloud Workers (with an Enterprise plan), this tab exposes only the destructive Clear Persistent Queue button (described at the end of this section). A maximum queue size of 1 GB disk space is automatically allocated per PQ‑enabled Destination, per Worker Process. The 1 GB limit is on outbound uncompressed data, and no compression is applied to the queue.

This limit is not configurable. If the queue fills up, Cribl Stream/Edge will block outbound data. To configure the queue size, compression, queue-full fallback behavior, and other options below, use a hybrid Group.

Mode: Use this menu to select when Cribl Stream/Edge engages the persistent queue in response to backpressure events from this Destination. The options are:

If a Worker/Edge Node starts with an invalid Mode setting, it automatically switches to Error mode. This might happen if the Worker/Edge Node is running a version that does not support other modes (older than 4.9.0), or if it encounters a nonexistent value in YAML configuration files.

File size limit: The maximum data volume to store in each queue file before closing it. Enter a numeral with units of KB, MB, etc. Defaults to 1 MB.

Queue size limit: The maximum amount of disk space that the queue can consume on each Worker Process. When the queue reaches this limit, the Destination stops queueing data and applies the Queue‑full behavior. Defaults to 5 GB. This field accepts positive numbers with units of KB, MB, GB, and so on. You can set it as high as 1 TB, unless you’ve configured a different Worker Process PQ size limit on the Group Settings/Fleet Settings page.

Queue file path: The location for the persistent queue files. Defaults to $CRIBL_HOME/state/queues. Cribl Stream/Edge will append /<worker‑id>/<output‑id> to this value.

Compression: Set the codec to use when compressing the persisted data after closing a file. Defaults to None. Gzip is also available.

Queue-full behavior: Whether to block or drop events when the queue begins to exert backpressure. A queue begins to exert backpressure when the disk is low or at full capacity. This setting has two options:

• Block: The output will refuse to accept new data until the receiver is ready. The system will return block signals back to the sender.
• Drop new data: Discard all new events until the backpressure event has resolved and the receiver is ready.

Backpressure duration Limit: When Mode is set to Backpressure, this setting controls how long to wait during network slowdowns before activating queues. A shorter duration enhances critical data loss prevention, while a longer duration helps avoid unnecessary queue transitions in environments with frequent, brief network fluctuations. The default value is 30 seconds.

Strict ordering: Toggle on (default) to enable FIFO (first in, first out) event forwarding, ensuring Cribl Stream/Edge sends earlier queued events first when receivers recover. The persistent queue flushes every 10 seconds in this mode. Toggle off to prioritize new events over queued events, configure a custom drain rate for the queue, and display this option:

• Drain rate limit (EPS): Optionally, set a throttling rate (in events per second) on writing from the queue to receivers. (The default 0 value disables throttling.) Throttling the queue drain rate can boost the throughput of new and active connections by reserving more resources for them. You can further optimize Worker startup connections and CPU load in the Worker Processes settings.

Clear Persistent Queue: For Cloud Enterprise only, click this button if you want to delete the files that are currently queued for delivery to this Destination. If you click this button, a confirmation modal appears. Clearing the queue frees up disk space by permanently deleting the queued data, without delivering it to downstream receivers. This button only appears after you define the Output ID.

Use the Clear Persistent Queue button with caution to avoid data loss. See Steps to Safely Disable and Clear Persistent Queues for more information.

Processing Settings

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Post‑Processing

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Pipeline: Pipeline or Pack to process data before sending the data out using this output.

System fields: A list of fields to automatically add to events that use this output. By default, includes cribl_pipe (identifying the Cribl Edge Pipeline that processed the event). Supports wildcards. Other options include:

• cribl_host – Cribl Edge Node that processed the event.
• cribl_input – Cribl Edge Source that processed the event.
• cribl_output – Cribl Edge Destination that processed the event.
• cribl_route – Cribl Edge Route (or QuickConnect) that processed the event.
• cribl_wp – Cribl Edge Worker Process that processed the event.

Retries

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Honor Retry-After header: Toggle on to honor a Retry-After header, provided that the header specifies a delay no longer than 180 seconds. Cribl Stream/Edge limits the delay to 180 seconds even if the Retry-After header specifies a longer delay. Any Retry-After header received takes precedence over all other options configured in the Retries section. Toggle off to ignore all Retry-After headers.

Settings for failed HTTP requests: When you want to automatically retry requests that receive particular HTTP response status codes, use these settings to list those response codes.

For any HTTP response status codes that are not explicitly configured for retries, Cribl Stream/Edge applies the following rules:

Upon receiving a response code that’s on the list, Cribl Stream/Edge first waits for a set time interval called the Pre-backoff interval and then begins retrying the request. Time between retries increases based on an exponential backoff algorithm whose base is the Backoff multiplier, until the backoff multiplier reaches the Backoff limit (ms). At that point, Cribl Stream/Edge continues retrying the request without increasing the time between retries any further.

If the sender (which manages the connection to the Destination) is at capacity, it will not accept any incoming events. These incoming events originate internally from a previous stage of the data flow when Destinations send outbound requests to their respective external services, and they include retry requests and new requests. Any events that were already in transit when the sender reached capacity will continue to be processed downstream.

Sender capacity is freed up when an outgoing request succeeds or encounters a non-retryable error. When the sender has available capacity again, it will resume accepting incoming events. This capacity management is influenced by the number of active connections and configured limits, such as concurrency and buffer sizes. If a Pipeline sends events faster than the Destination can process, the buffers may fill up, leading to backpressure and Sender at capacity warnings. This backpressure prevents the sender from accepting additional requests until capacity is restored.

By default, this Destination has no response codes configured for automatic retries. For each response code you want to add to the list, select Add Setting and configure the following settings:

• HTTP status code: A response code that indicates a failed request, for example 429 (Too Many Requests) or 503 (Service Unavailable).
• Pre-backoff interval (ms): The amount of time to wait before beginning retries, in milliseconds. Defaults to 1000 (one second).
• Backoff multiplier: The base for the exponential backoff algorithm. A value of 2 (the default) means that Cribl Stream/Edge will retry after 2 seconds, then 4 seconds, then 8 seconds, and so on.
• Backoff limit (ms): The maximum backoff interval Cribl Stream/Edge should apply for its final retry, in milliseconds. Default (and minimum) is 10,000 (10 seconds); maximum is 180,000 (180 seconds, or 3 minutes).

Retry timed-out HTTP requests: Toggle on to automatically retry requests that have timed out and display the following settings for configuring retry behavior:

• Pre-backoff interval (ms): The amount of time to wait before beginning retries, in milliseconds. Defaults to 1000 (one second).
• Backoff multiplier: The base for the exponential backoff algorithm. A value of 2 (the default) means that Cribl Stream/Edge will retry after 2 seconds, then 4 seconds, then 8 seconds, and so on.
• Backoff limit (ms): The maximum backoff interval Cribl Stream/Edge should apply for its final retry, in milliseconds. Default (and minimum) is 10,000 (10 seconds); maximum is 180,000 (180 seconds, or 3 minutes).

Advanced Settings

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Validate server certs: Toggle on to reject certificates that are not authorized by a CA in the CA certificate path, nor by another trusted CA (for example, the system’s CA).

Round-robin DNS: Toggle on to enable round-robin DNS lookup across multiple IP addresses, IPv4 and IPv6. When a DNS server resolves a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) to multiple IP addresses, Cribl Edge will sequentially use each address in the order they are returned by the DNS server for subsequent connection attempts.

Compress: Toggle on (default) to compress the payload body before sending.

Request timeout: Amount of time (in seconds) to wait for a request to complete before aborting it. Defaults to 30.

Request concurrency: Maximum number of concurrent requests per Worker Process. When Cribl Edge hits this limit, it begins throttling traffic to the downstream service. Defaults to 5. Minimum: 1. Maximum: 32.

Body size limit (KB): Maximum size of the request body before compression. Defaults to 1024 KB. The actual request body size might exceed the specified value because the Destination adds bytes when it writes to the downstream receiver. Cribl recommends that you experiment with the Body size limit value until downstream receivers reliably accept all events.

Buffer memory limit (KB): Total amount of memory used to buffer outgoing requests waiting to be sent. If left blank, defaults to 5 times the max body size (if set). If 0, no limit is enforced. This provides granular control over the memory allocated for buffering outgoing batched requests. Increasing the limit allows batches to grow larger before being flushed, improving efficiency for data with high cardinality (a large number of unique batches). Finding the optimal balance between efficient data transfer and memory usage involves adjusting both the Buffer memory limit and Body size limit settings.

Events-per-request limit: Maximum number of events to include in the request body. The 0 default allows unlimited events.

Flush period (sec): Maximum time between requests. Low values can cause the payload size to be smaller than the configured Body size limit. Defaults to 1 second.

Extra HTTP headers: Click Add Header to insert extra headers as Name/Value pairs. Values will be sent encrypted.

Failed request logging mode: Use this drop-down to determine which data should be logged when a request fails. Select among None (the default), Payload, or Payload + Headers. With this last option, Cribl Edge will redact all headers, except non-sensitive headers that you declare below in Safe headers.

Safe headers: Add headers to declare them as safe to log in plaintext. (Sensitive headers such as authorization will always be redacted, even if listed here.) Use a tab or hard return to separate header names.

Environment: If you’re using GitOps, optionally use this field to specify a single Git branch on which to enable this configuration. If empty, the config will be enabled everywhere.

Verifying the New Relic Destination

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Once you’ve configured log and/or metrics sources, create one or more Routes to send data to New Relic.

In New Relic, you can create visualizations incorporating the Cribl Edge-supplied data, then add them to new or existing dashboards as widgets.

Logs and metrics land in two different places in New Relic.

Log Queries

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To access and query log data:

• Navigate to the New Relic home screen’s Logs header option, and click the (+) button at right.

• Then to build your queries, use the Find logs where input field, and add desired columns to the table view below the graph,.

Metrics Queries

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To access and query metrics data:

• From the New Relic home screen, *Click Browse Data > Metrics > Can Search for metricNames.

• Then, customize time range and dimensions to build the desired logic for your queries.

• Alternatively, you can use NRQL to build your own query searches.

Proxying Requests

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If you need to proxy HTTP/S requests, see System Proxy Configuration.

Troubleshooting

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The Destination’s configuration modal has helpful tabs for troubleshooting:

Live Data: Try capturing live data to see real-time events as they flow through the Destination. On the Live Data tab, click Start Capture to begin viewing real-time data.

Logs: Review and search the logs that provide detailed information about the delivery process, including any errors or warnings that may have occurred.

Test: Ensures that the Destination is correctly set up and reachable. Verify that sample events are sent correctly by clicking Run Test.

You can also view the Monitoring page that provides a comprehensive overview of data volume and rate, helping you identify delivery issues. Analyze the graphs showing events and bytes in/out over time.