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Grafana Loki
Grafana Loki is a Prometheus-inspired log aggregation system that indexes labels (not log contents) for cost-effective storage and fast querying, with Grafana integration.
Grafana Loki is a horizontally scalable, highly available log aggregation system inspired by Prometheus. It stores logs efficiently by indexing only metadata labels for each log stream, rather than performing full-text indexing.
Key Features
- Label-based log indexing and querying aligned with Prometheus-style labels
- Horizontally scalable architectures (single binary or microservices) with multi-tenancy support
- Cost-efficient storage by keeping logs compressed and indexing only metadata
- Native integration with Grafana for exploration, dashboards, and correlation with metrics
- Multiple ingestion options via agents and clients (including Grafana Alloy and legacy Promtail)
Use Cases
- Centralized aggregation of Kubernetes and container logs with label-based filtering
- Incident investigation by correlating metrics and logs using shared labels
- Multi-team or multi-environment log collection with tenant isolation
Limitations and Considerations
- Not designed for full-text indexing; queries are primarily optimized around labels and structured metadata
Loki is a strong fit when you want an operationally simpler, Prometheus-like approach to logs with efficient storage and fast label-based queries. It is commonly deployed as part of a Grafana-centric observability stack for monitoring and troubleshooting.
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