How to Monitor Apache Web Server

In order to effectively manage and monitor your infrastructure, a web admin needs clear and transparent information about the types of activity going on within their servers. Server logs provide a documented footprint of all traffic and errors that occur within an environment. Apache has two main log files, Error Logs, and Access Logs.

Error Logs — Apache error logs provide diagnostic information and descriptive errors that occur during a server’s uptime. This is almost always your first step to diagnosing and troubleshooting issues with your server and environment. Depending on your environment, your Apache error logs may be available in different folders.

Access Logs — Apache access logs record all incoming requests and traffic to a central file. For example, when someone visits your website, a log is created and stores the visitor’s information such as IP address, what pages they accessed, browser information, and what time they visited. This information is critical to administrators and developers at providing insight into their end-users behavior, what they are accessing, where they are accessing the site from, and with what software and operating systems.

A normal log file for Apache could have hundreds of thousands of lines that an administrator would need to parse through using command-line tools and utilities. If you are new to…