I am new to fluentd/fluentbit but could not understand the difference between forward and tcp inputs. In the examples, they emit the logs from the app using a forward input
What exactly is the difference between logging via forward or tcp? They both look the same to me.
Forward is the Fluentd protocol[0] that runs on top of TCP to 'forward' messages from one Fluentd instance to another. That protocol specifies how the 'records' are transferred over the network and also how it can operate in a secure way with TLS/SSL.
note: Forward protocol data is in msgpack format.
[0] https://github.com/fluent/fluentd/wiki/Forward-Protocol-Specification-v1