You need both the log4j-api-2.0 and the log4j-core-2.0 jar files in the classpath. If the core jar is not found, the api jar falls back to a SimpleLogger (console) implementation.
By changing the config to <configuration status="trace">
you can see log4j2 internal logging that may help trouble-shoot configuration issues. (This also requires the log4j-core-2.0 jar though.)
The log4j2.xml file can be in the classpath, or you can specify a location with system property -Dlog4j.configurationFile=/path/to/log4j2.xml
,