If you are at a higher log level, say, WARN, is it safe to say that
lower-level (DEBUG, INFO) calls will not risk blocking, nor otherwise have any
effect on the socket?  I should think so.

Regardless of destination or concurrency issues, the trick of what to log, at
what level, is both important and fairly devoid of best practices lore.

Few sources even acknowledge the importance of logging, though nearly every
professional programmer practices it.  Fewer lay out reasonable strategies, or
even discuss the importance of having a logging strategy.  It's arguably more
important to have a rigorous logging discipline at all than to worry about
which one is best.

In normal production scenarios there should be relatively few log messages, so
stress on the socket should be low.  Canonically, production runs at WARN or
ERROR, and there should be nearly none of those.  Even INFO messages should be
sparse - verbosity is for DEBUG.  If you've cranked up your log level to
DEBUG, it's because you've got bigger concerns than a little blocking.

Yes, I think the SocketAppender is the way to go! Thanks for the tip.
And I agree 100% with Lew that the messages should be sparse. If you
have to debug, then turn off the socket and go back to the console or
the file.

Thanks Manish, I was able to set up the socket logging very easily and
works as advertised.

Alejandrina