The best tool for this kind of work is to use a log management service, which provides a real-time interface for monitoring and doesn't require setting up all the infrastructure for AWS Kinesis.
There are some based on syslogd
and have a really good integration with Rails.
Be sure to check out:
- Papertrail (papertrailapp.com)
- Loggly (www.loggly.com)
- Splunk (www.splunk.com - on-premise)