Routing is a core feature that allows to route your data through Filters and finally to one or multiple destinations.
There are two important concepts in Routing:
When the data is generated by the input plugins, it comes with a Tag (most of the time the Tag is configured manually), the Tag is a human-readable indicator that helps to identify the data source.
In order to define where the data should be routed, a Match rule must be specified in the output configuration.
Consider the following configuration example that aims to deliver CPU metrics to an Elasticsearch database and Memory metrics to the standard output interface:
[INPUT]Name cpuTag my_cpu[INPUT]Name memTag my_mem[OUTPUT]Name esMatch my_cpu[OUTPUT]Name stdoutMatch my_mem
Note: the above is a simple example demonstrating how Routing is configured.
Routing works automatically reading the Input Tags and the Output Match rules. If some data has a Tag that doesn't match upon routing time, the data is deleted.
Routing is flexible enough to support wildcard in the Match pattern. The below example defines a common destination for both sources of data:
[INPUT]Name cpuTag my_cpu[INPUT]Name memTag my_mem[OUTPUT]Name stdoutMatch my_*
The match rule is set to my_* which means it will match any Tag that starts with my_.