Nobody loves a data dump, especially when they’re debugging logs. Between filtering out warnings, EOL notices, and poorly-written error statements, identifying the cause of a failed sync can feel like an endless slog.
Airbyte Cloud has always offered logs directly in the UI, but Airbyte Flex didn’t for one major reason: data sovereignty. Because Airbyte Flex keeps the data plane in your infrastructure, sync statuses lived on the data plane and the control plane had no access to the detailed logs. Your options for debugging sync errors were either calling kubectl or dumping the log data into a bucket and searching for errors there.
With the release of Airbyte 2.4, you no longer need to navigate the data dump to identify the error. Flex accounts can opt in to sync log collection directly from the Airbyte UI for easier navigation and review.
What sync logs show you Sync logs record Airbyte operations as it reads from a source and writes to a destination. When something goes wrong, the logs tell you what happened and where. A few examples of what you can now see directly from the control plane:
Sync status and duration for every job and attempt.Error messages and stack traces when a sync fails or is interrupted.Record counts and checkpoints to confirm data landed in the right location.Retry attempts and the conditions that triggered them.You can search, filter, and download logs from the Job History tab on any connection, the same way Cloud users do today. No more jumping to kubectl to pull container output.
Discuss this feature with your Airbyte representative We know that for many of our users, data sovereignty is critical for doing business. Maybe it’s for compliance, security, or data residency reasons. It could also be because you want to build inference and intelligence in-house rather than rely on an external vendor to understand your unique needs. Airbyte Flex was designed for all of these use cases, without forcing you to own the entire operational burden of an in-house solution.
If you enable this feature, you’ll give Airbyte access to some of your data. Sync logs are operational data, but they can contain sensitive information: source and destination identifiers, schema names, error messages referencing specific records, and in some cases fragments of the actual data. If you automatically forward those logs to the Airbyte-managed control plane, some information crosses the data boundary.
That’s why log collection is off by default. To enable it, you’ll need to contact your Airbyte representative. They’lll walk you through the configuration and explain what data will be forwarded.
But before you reach out, loop in your security team. They may want to evaluate:
Log information: Airbyte logs record connector operations, metadata, and error output. Depending on the source and connector, error messages may include field names, table names, or partial record data.Log destination: Forwarded logs are stored in the Airbyte-managed control plane, which is covered by Airbyte's SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, and ISO 27001 compliance (see the Airbyte Trust Center for details).Whether it's safe to forward this data: Some organizations have policies that prohibit any operational data from leaving a specific environment. You may also need to maintain HIPAA or PCI compliance. That compliance could be compromised if you share log data with Airbyte. If any of these scenarios apply to you, this feature may not be the right fit and your Airbyte representative can discuss alternatives.If you decide the tradeoff does not work for your organization, your data plane continues to operate within your infrastructure, with only metadata reaching the control plane.
How to enable sync logs Upgrade your Data Plane to version 2.4. You can find more details about 2.4 in the release notes . Review the Enterprise Flex documentation and the log browsing guide to understand what logs capture. Discuss with your security team whether forwarding sync logs to the control plane is acceptable under your data governance policies. Contact your Airbyte representative to enable log collection for your Flex account. Once enabled, logs appear in the Timeline tab for each connection. Select an individual sync to find its logs. You can search within individual sync attempts, copy shareable links to specific jobs for your team, and download full log files when you need to investigate across multiple attempts.
If you do opt in, your team will now be able to debug without SSH access or nearly as many Kubernetes commands. Contact your Airbyte representative to get started.
