Configuring your Application to use the TCP Log Router

New in ReflectInsight v5.6.1 is the ability to add Remote Connections to the ReflectInsight Live Viewer. These Remote Connections are connections to the ReflectInsight Router Service. If you’ve read the posts this morning then you know how to install and configure the ReflectInsight Router Service and then add Remote Connections to the ReflectInsight Live Viewer. Now we will walk through how to configure your application to send messages to the ReflectInsight Router Service.

Open up your ReflectInsight.config file (if using satellite configuration files) otherwise go to the app or web configuration file and go to the section named <insightSettings>. You will then need to add a Router section as shown here:

The default port to connect to us 10881. If you changed the port in the ReflectInsight Router Service, you will need to set the same port here.

If the ReflectInsight Router Service is installed on the same machine as your application than you can leave the hostname to “localhost”. If the ReflectInsight Router Service is installed on another machine, you will need to put the computer name or IP.

NOTE: Port 10881 is the port from which your application will communicate to the ReflectInsight Router Service. The ReflectInsight Live Viewer will communicate to the ReflectInsight Router Service on port 10882.

Now that you’ve added the Router reference, you need to reference this named Router from your listener groups destination as shown here:

Enjoy!

Please download the latest version of ReflectInsight now and enjoy! Also checkout our updated Samples, and of course all our libraries can be found on NuGet.

We welcome any feedback you may have. Feedback can be given at our UserVoice site.

Thanks
The ReflectSoftware Team

Getting Started with ReflectInsight Remote Connections

New in ReflectInsight v5.6.1 is the Remote Connections view. This feature allows you to connect the ReflectInsight Live Viewer to any remote ReflectInsight Router Service and receive logging messages in real-time from the remote computers ReflectInsight Router Service.

Typical use case for this is that you have applications running on QA, Staging or even Production systems and you want to see the log files…but not just any log file…live log files! How is this possible? Well from your application you configure it to send to the Router listener (among others). The Router listener will then router your application logged messages in real-time to a ReflectInsight Router Service. If need be this Router Service is accessible from behind the firewall, possibly on another machine. Now from your ReflectInsight Live Viewer, you connect to this ReflectInsight Router Service and once connected, you will receive on your local computer all logged messages in real-time from your applications. This eliminates the need to remote desktop in to servers to view log files or view log files from network shares or from terminal service applications.

Remote Connections

The Remote Connections is a feature that is available with our Standard edition of ReflectInsight and just with the Live Viewer. It is also a free upgrade to those with active Support and Upgrade subscriptions.

To enable the Remote Connections view go to the SETTINGS tab in the Live Viewer and click on Remote Connections.

The Remote Connections view will show up at the bottom of the Live Viewer. You can re-dock it someplace else if you desire.

To add a Remote Connection, click on the first icon which will add a Remote Connection:

When adding a Remote Connection the port automatically defaults to 10882, which is the default port configuration in the ReflectInsight Router Service. If you changed the port to another value you will want to enter that value here.

• The Display Name is a human readable display for the computer your connecting to.
• The Computer Name is either the computer name or IP.
• Activate Connection Immediately will do as it says, after creating the Remote Connection it will immediately activate and connect to the remote computer.
• Group Name (OPTIONAL) is just something for you to identify which group the remote connection belongs to. Could be QA, Staging, Production, Toronto, New York, Europe, etc.
• Description (OPTIONAL) is another field for you to describe the connection.

After creating your Remote Connection, you will see it in the Remote Connections view. The Remote Connections view also shows you detailed information about each remote connection, like connection status, total number of messages received and the last received timestamp.

From the Remote Connections view you can edit, stop or start an existing Remote Connection.

The ReflectInsight Live Viewer will also show a new connection status toggle button on the status bar. You can use this to turn off all active connections. If you turn it back on, it will re-enable any previous active connections.

Once you start  using the Remote Connections view with the ReflectInsight Router Service, you will realise that this is a game changer!

Enjoy!

Please download the latest version of ReflectInsight now and enjoy! Also checkout our updated Samples, and of course all our libraries can be found on NuGet.

We welcome any feedback you may have. Feedback can be given at our UserVoice site.

Thanks
The ReflectSoftware Team