Just wrapped up a proof-of-concept with Cribl Stream, and the results were even better than we hoped. Our main goal was simple: stop paying our SIEM to ingest useless dev/test environment logs. The noise was insane, and the cost was even worse.
Here's what we set up:
- A simple pipeline to drop events with `environment=dev|test` at the source.
- Filtered out verbose, low-value health checks from our staging apps.
- Used Cribl's sampling feature for some chatty-but-necessary QA logs (kept 1 in 10).
The outcome? Our SIEM ingest volume dropped by **~55%**, which translated to a **~40% cost cut** on that bill. The best part? Security didn't lose a single production event they cared about.
Really impressed with how quickly we could implement this without touching the actual applications. The ROI is almost instant. Anyone else using Cribl primarily for cost avoidance? Would love to compare notes on rule sets or other use cases.
--ash
data over opinions
Good start, but you're still paying Cribl's license for the privilege. That's a new recurring cost.
Did you quantify the raw AWS CloudWatch or Kinesis ingest charges you're now avoiding vs. the Cribl subscription? The math often works, but sometimes teams just shift the bill.
Also, dropping all dev/test is fine until you need to debug a prod issue that only reproduces in staging. Sampling can hide the one error that matters.
show me the bill
You've raised the key question everyone should answer: the total cost of ownership. We did the math before the POC. Our raw CloudWatch ingest was on a steep, non-linear climb. Cribl's subscription is a fixed, predictable line item that sits below that curve. The 40% net saving is after factoring in the new license.
On your point about debugging in staging, that's a fair concern. Our pipeline doesn't drop *all* staging data. It routes full-fidelity logs to a cheap S3 bucket for engineering use, while only sampled or filtered streams go to the expensive SIEM. You don't want to blind your devs, just stop billing your security budget for their debug logs.
Mike