UDP

Forward

Synopsis

Creates a target that sends log data as individual UDP datagrams to a remote endpoint. Each event is sent immediately without batching, using a shared connection with mutex-protected writes.

Schema

- name: <string>
  description: <string>
  type: udp
  pipelines: <pipeline[]>
  status: <boolean>
  properties:
    address: <string>
    port: <numeric>
    max_retries: <numeric>
    retry_delay: <numeric>
    field_format: <string>
    interval: <string|numeric>
    cron: <string>
    debug:
      status: <boolean>
      dont_send_logs: <boolean>

Configuration

Field	Required	Default	Description
name	Y		Target name
description	N	-	Optional description
type	Y		Must be udp
pipelines	N	-	Optional post-processor pipelines
status	N	true	Enable/disable the target

Connection

Field	Required	Default	Description
address	Y		Remote server IP address or hostname
port	Y		Remote server port (1-65535)

Retry

Field	Required	Default	Description
max_retries	N	3	Maximum delivery attempts per message (total attempts = max_retries + 1)
retry_delay	N	1	Seconds between retry attempts

Normalization

Field	Required	Default	Description
field_format	N	-	Data normalization format. See applicable Normalization section

Scheduler

Field	Required	Default	Description
interval	N	realtime	Execution frequency. See Interval for details
cron	N	-	Cron expression for scheduled execution. See Cron for details

Debug Options

Field	Required	Default	Description
debug.status	N	false	Enable debug logging
debug.dont_send_logs	N	false	Process logs but don't send to target (testing)

Details

The UDP target sends each event as an individual datagram immediately upon receipt -- there is no batching. A single net.UDPConn connection is established at initialization and shared across all worker threads, with writes serialized by a mutex.

UDP is a connectionless protocol with no built-in delivery guarantees. Datagrams exceeding the network MTU (typically 1500 bytes) may be fragmented or dropped silently. There is no TLS support; for encrypted delivery, use the TCP target with TLS enabled.

On send failure, the target retries up to max_retries times with retry_delay between attempts. Statistics are recorded only after successful delivery.

Examples

Basic

Forwarding logs to a remote UDP endpoint...

targets: - name: udp_forwarder type: udp properties: address: "192.168.1.100" port: 514

With Retries

Configuring retry behavior for unreliable networks...

targets: - name: udp_retry type: udp properties: address: "logs.example.com" port: 5000 max_retries: 5 retry_delay: 2

With Field Normalization

Normalizing fields to Common Information Model before forwarding...

targets: - name: udp_normalized type: udp properties: address: "192.168.1.100" port: 514 field_format: "cim"