With Aria Operations for Logs you can view the security flow logs of the NSX environment.

The following security features support flow logging:
  • TLS Inspection
  • Gateway IDPS
  • URL Filtering

Unified Security Logs

All the security verticals generate and save unified security flow logs in the Unified Security Logs format in a single log file on a node. This single log is exported to syslog server, which is configured for Aria Operations for Logs. Aria Operations for Logs will then process the logs to provide further log management, analysis, and display them by using NSX Content Pack.

Displaying Logs on Aria Operations for Logs

The dashboard 'NSX - Unified Security Flow Logs' in the NSX Content Pack shows chart widgets, which are visual representation of the security flow logs.

An Aria Operations for Logs Content Pack is a plugin. It contains dashboards, extracted fields, saved queries, and alerts that are related to a specific product or set of logs.

The NSX Content Pack is available on Aria Operations for Logs Marketplace.

For more information about Aria Operations for Logs and how to install a Content Pack from Content Pack Market place, see the chapter Install a Content Pack from the Content Pack Marketplace from the Aria Operations for Logs documentation.

Top-N and Last X-hours

You can also query events in Aria Operations for Logs for Top-N information from last X-hours using Interactive Analytics and Content Pack.

Remote Logging Server

To send logs to a remote logging server, NSX appliances and hypervisors must be configured with remote logging on each node separately.

Note: For the logs to be sent to the syslog server, you must enable Logging for the specific Rules on NSX Manager.

For more information, see Configure Remote Logging.

If logs are not received by the remote log server, see Troubleshooting Syslog Issues.

Unified Security Log Format

On an Edge node, the unified security flow logs are stored in /var/log/syslog. You can log in as root and use the grep command to search this file for unified logs. For example: 
cat /var/log/syslog | grep 'unified-logs'

Examples of log messages:

TLS Inspection 
2021-10-12T09:00:46.192Z nsxedge-18734920-1-mps29 NSX 22621 SYSTEM [nsx@6876 comp="nsx-edge" 
subcomp="tls-proxy" s2comp="unified-logs" level="INFO"] {"event_type": "fw-flow-terminate-log", 
"event_trigger": ["fw-rule-log"], "origin": {"fw_type": "gateway", "fw_uuid": "79427614-4a0d-2692-032c-eb4692f717a9", 
"node_uuid": "ec11a626-f425-3bc2-671d-a656500003b2"}, "flow": {"start": "2021-10-12T09:00:46.723Z", 
"end": "2021-10-12T09:00:46.773Z", "ip_ver": "ipv4", "flow_id": "0x1e0000704f000018", 
"src_ip": "192.168.100.160", "src_port": 25700, "dest_ip": "1.1.5.10", "dest_port": 443, "proto": "TCP", "tcp_flags": "",
"bytes_toserver": 95, "bytes_toclient": 29873, "reason": "FIN-close", "final_action": "PASS"}, "fw": {"action": "PASS", "rule_id": 1002,
"direction": "", "rule_tag": ""}, "http": {"http_method": "", "hostname": "www.facebook.com", "url": "www.facebook.com/benign_pdf1.pdf", "scheme": "", "http_user_agent": "", "status": "",
"site_category": ""SOCIAL_NETWORK"", "site_reputation": "Trustworthy"},"tls_inspection": {"action": "PASS", "rule_id": 1008, "domain": "www.facebook.com", "cert_status": "ok", "tls_version_toserver": "TLSv1.2",
"cipher_to_server": "TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256", "reason": "", "tls_rule_tag": "TLS External Rule"}, "idps": {"action": "PASS", "rule_id": 1007,
"ids_profile_id": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000", "alert_event": ["SOCIAL_NETWORK"], "protocol_event": ["http"]}, "app_id": {"app": ""APP_HTTP", "APP_FACEBOOK", "APP_SSL""}
Gateway IDPS 
2021-11-11T04:07:37.489Z nsxedge-18866667-2-NAT-fc-3-nov NSX 27330 SYSTEM [nsx@6876 comp="nsx-edge" subcomp="datapathd" s2comp="unified-logs" level="INFO"]
 {"event_type": "fw-flow-terminate-log", "event_trigger": ["ids-rule-log"], "origin": {"fw_type": "gateway", "fw_uuid": "544ee558-fad0-e624-019f-e8e3e0472c91", 
"node_uuid": "dabf16c9-ec11-833c-0c00-8c832f771729"}, "flow": {"start": "2021-11-11T04:07:07.000Z", "end": "2021-11-11T04:07:37.000Z",
"ip_ver": "ipv4", "flow_id": "0xd44d00306e0a0004", "src_ip": "1.1.1.10", "src_port": 35714, "dest_ip": "10.142.7.1", "dest_port": 53,
"proto": "UDP", "tcp_flags": "FPW", "bytes_toserver": 297878, "bytes_toclient": 71, "pkts_toserver": 71, "pkts_toclient": 1, 
"reason": "FIN-close", "final_action": "PASS"}, "fw": {"action": "PASS", "rule_id": 2025, "direction": "", "rule_tag": ""},
"l7profile": {"entry_id": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000", "action": "PASS"}, 
"http": {"http_method": "", "hostname": "", "url": "", "scheme": "", "http_user_agent": "", "status": "", "site_category": "", 
"site_reputation": "UNKNOWN"}, "idps": {"action": "IDP_DETECT", "rule_id": 2028, "ids_profile_id": "9872e27a-ead4-4c93-af5f-4df1ec0c73e1", 
"alert_event": [], "protocol_event": []}, "app_id": {"app": ""APP_DNS""}}
URL Filtering 
2021-11-08T08:30:59.208Z nsxedge-18866667-2-NAT-fc-3-nov NSX 9495 SYSTEM [nsx@6876 comp="nsx-edge" subcomp="datapathd" s2comp="unified-logs" level="INFO"]
{"event_type": "fw-flow-terminate-log", "event_trigger": ["fw-rule-log"], "origin": {"fw_type": "gateway", "fw_uuid": "544ee558-fad0-e624-019f-e8e3e0472c91",
"node_uuid": "dabf16c9-ec11-833c-0c00-8c832f771729"}, "flow": {"start": "2021-11-08T08:30:57.000Z", "end": "2021-11-08T08:30:59.000Z",
"ip_ver": "ipv4", "flow_id": "0x4001006c04000000", "src_ip": "1.1.1.10", "src_port": 43600, "dest_ip": "13.226.234.18", 
"dest_port": 80, "proto": "TCP", "tcp_flags": "FREW", "bytes_toserver": 54968, "bytes_toclient": 444, 
"pkts_toserver": 444, "pkts_toclient": 7, "reason": "FIN-close", "final_action": "PASS"}, "fw": {"action": "PASS", "rule_id": 1004, "direction": "",
"rule_tag": ""}, "l7profile": {"entry_id": "e9580107-2749-471c-be82-715d530bf4d4", "action": "PASS"},
"http": {"http_method": "", "hostname": "", "url": "espn.com/", "scheme": "", "http_user_agent": "", "status": "",
"site_category": ""SPORTS"", "site_reputation": "TRUSTWORTHY"}, "app_id": {"app": ""APP_HTTP", "APP_ESPN""}}