Cribl Packs have long been the gold standard for packaging and sharing complex telemetry pipelines. But as deployments grow from single-digit to multi-region Worker Groups, even "portable" configurations can turn into copy‑paste debt. Group Variables for Packs and Enhanced Pack Cloning move Packs from simple portability to true environment-aware automation.
Group Variables for Packs: Define Once, Run Everywhere
Configuring Sources and Destinations within a Pack often requires tweaking small details (like an S3 bucket region or a local environment tag) each time you deploy to a new group.
Now instead of manually editing Pack configuration for every environment, Group Variables let you define those details once per Worker Group and inject the right values at deploy time.
How it Works
Group Variables act like environment variables at the Worker Group level. You can now bind specific fields within your Pack’s Sources and Destinations to these variables.
Redundancy Reduction: Instead of populating the same AWS Region or API Key in five different places, you define it once at the Worker Group level.
Regional Efficiency: A single Pack can now be deployed globally. For example, a Pack fetching logs from S3 can pull its Region and BucketName from Group Variables, ensuring the Pack remains "pure-config" while its environment context changes.
Enhanced Pack Cloning: Seamless Portability for Pack Dependencies
Moving a Pack used to mean hunting down every secret, certificate, and Group Variable in the current Worker Group. Then you had to recreate it all in the target Worker Group. Enhanced Pack Cloning lets you copy a Pack and its dependencies (secrets, certificates, and Group Variables) across multiple Worker Groups or Fleets.
Key Benefits
Zero-touch portability: No more manual re-entry of sensitive certificates or complex variables when moving from Dev to Prod.
Respects existing environments: When cloning, if an object already exists in the target group, the system will not overwrite it. This ensures that local environmental overrides are respected while still ensuring all necessary dependencies are present.
Speed to value: Drastically reduces the time required to spin up new regions or test environments by "carrying" the necessary infrastructure with the Pack.
Together, Group Variables and Enhanced Pack Cloning turn Packs into reusable patterns you can stamp out across environments. Define environment-specific settings once per Worker Group, then clone the Pack with its dependencies to new regions or tenants in a few clicks.
Conclusion
Efficiency in observability isn't just about how fast you process data, it's about how fast you can manage the systems that do the processing. With Group Variables and Enhanced Pack Cloning, Cribl is giving you the tools to manage Cribl configs at scale. Ops, security, and observability teams get cleaner, environment-aware Packs that scale with every new region, tenant, or tool.
Ready to see these features in action? If you use Cribl.Cloud, log in and try them out today. If you use Cribl on premises, upgrade to the latest version of Cribl today!
