Structured logging with ELK stack integration

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Structured logging outputs JSON-formatted log entries for machine parsing. Each log line includes timestamp, level, message, and contextual fields like request_id, user_id, and service. Structured logs enable powerful queries in Elasticsearch through Kibana. Log levels (debug, info, warn, error) filter noise in different environments. Correlation IDs trace requests across microservices. The ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) or EFK (Elasticsearch, Fluentd, Kibana) centralizes logs. Fluentd or Filebeat ships logs from containers. Log rotation prevents disk exhaustion. Sensitive data like passwords and tokens must be redacted. Structured logging transforms debugging from grepping text files to querying indexed, searchable data.