Forward Windows Eventlogs with RSyslog Windows Agent

This article will describe, how to use the RSyslog Windows Agent to forward the local Windows EventLog messages. This article will show the different steps. For this we take you to several smaller guides, that show you, how to setup each part. We assume, that no basic configuration is currently available.

A configuration like this is needed very often and basically on any Windows machine that should forward it’s logs. Therefore, this reflects the default configuration after installing the RSyslog Windows Agent. It can be used on machines in your local network or on a site to forward from the single machines to a central relay server, which then forwards all messages to your company’s central log server.

Basically, the configuration of RSyslog Windows Agent consists of 3 parts.

1. A so-called service which generates the log data to be processed by, for example, polling the Windows EventLog.

2. Rules with Filters. Filters give you the power to decide which log messages are important enough to be kept or not.

3. The action that has to be taken. In our case, forwarding the syslog messages.

Step 1: Setting up the ruleset and action.

Usually we start by creating the ruleset, rule and action. The reason lies in the configuration structure. So we will first create the mentioned items. In the end, we will have a basic rule with no particular filter and a forward via syslog action. That means, that all messages will be forwarded to a central host.

Click here to see the steps.

Step 2: Setting up the service.

Now we will set up the service. There is one thing to mention first. You need to know choose one of the latter links according to your operating system. This is important, or the setup might not work properly. We have 2 different versions of the EventLog Monitor. Here is a small list in which you can see, which service fits which operating systems.

1. EventLog Monitor: 2000, XP, 2003

2. EventLog Monitor V2: Vista, 2008, 7, 10

This is important. EventLog Monitor V2 will NOT work on the older operating systems. In contrary, the older EventLog Monitor will work on the newer systems, but might not work correctly, so it is advised to used the optimized EventLog Monitor V2. This is due to the massive changes that Microsoft introduced to the EventLog system with Vista.

EventLog Monitor Steps

EventLog Monitor V2 Steps

That’s it, you are already finished. Easy wasn’t it? Now you should receive your EventLog messages on your central syslog server.

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