Zones

A Zone is a distinct unit within a Logscape deployment. Zones are hierarchical and may contain other zones. A Logscape component is placed in a zone by changing agent.role  property in the boot.properties  file.

The manager must sit in the top-level zone. And any Index,Index Store or Forwarder component can be place in any of the zones from the top-level going down.

Dot Notation is used to represent the Zone, similar to how domain names work, except that the top level is read from the left left to the right.

The examples below contains a Forwarder in the uk and us sub-zones:

agent.role=acme.uk.Forwarder

agent.role=acme.us.Forwarder

Data Flow

Data flows differently when components are placed inside zones. Zones can be used to shape the flow of data in your deployment to reflect the geographical location of the data, data volume or the types of users accessing the data.

Index Stores and Forwarders - Forwarders will ship data to Index Stores in their zone. If there are no Index Stores in its zone, data will be shipped to an Index Stores in the parent zone. Index Stores also provide search functionality for the Forwarders within its zone.

By default strict.logserver.zoning=true, however this value can be changed to false in order to ship data between zones in the boot.properties file