Important: This documentation is about an older version. It's relevant only to the release noted, many of the features and functions have been updated or replaced. Please view the current version.

Installation

Helm

Open source

Install Loki with Helm

Prerequisites

Make sure you have Helm installed.

Add Loki’s chart repository to Helm:

PLEASE NOTE On 2020/12/11 Loki’s Helm charts were moved from their initial location within the Loki repo and hosted at https://grafana.github.io/loki/charts to their new location at https://github.com/grafana/helm-charts which are hosted at https://grafana.github.io/helm-charts

helm repo add grafana https://grafana.github.io/helm-charts

To update the chart repository, run:

helm repo update

Deploy Loki to your cluster

Deploy with default config

helm upgrade --install loki grafana/loki-stack

Deploy in a custom namespace

helm upgrade --install loki --namespace=loki grafana/loki

Deploy with custom config

helm upgrade --install loki grafana/loki --set "key1=val1,key2=val2,..."

Deploy Loki Stack (Loki, Promtail, Grafana, Prometheus)

helm upgrade --install loki grafana/loki-stack  --set grafana.enabled=true,prometheus.enabled=true,prometheus.alertmanager.persistentVolume.enabled=false,prometheus.server.persistentVolume.enabled=false

Deploy Loki Stack (Loki, Promtail, Grafana, Prometheus) with persistent volume claim

helm upgrade --install loki grafana/loki-stack  --set grafana.enabled=true,prometheus.enabled=true,prometheus.alertmanager.persistentVolume.enabled=false,prometheus.server.persistentVolume.enabled=false,loki.persistence.enabled=true,loki.persistence.storageClassName=standard,loki.persistence.size=5Gi

Deploy Loki Stack (Loki, Fluent Bit, Grafana, Prometheus)

helm upgrade --install loki grafana/loki-stack \
  --set fluent-bit.enabled=true,promtail.enabled=false,grafana.enabled=true,prometheus.enabled=true,prometheus.alertmanager.persistentVolume.enabled=false,prometheus.server.persistentVolume.enabled=false

Deploy Grafana to your cluster

To install Grafana on your cluster with Helm, use the following command:

helm install loki-grafana grafana/grafana

To get the admin password for the Grafana pod, run the following command:

kubectl get secret --namespace <YOUR-NAMESPACE> loki-grafana -o jsonpath="{.data.admin-password}" | base64 --decode ; echo

To access the Grafana UI, run the following command:

kubectl port-forward --namespace <YOUR-NAMESPACE> service/loki-grafana 3000:80

Navigate to http://localhost:3000 and login with admin and the password output above. Then follow the instructions for adding the Loki Data Source, using the URL http://loki:3100/ for Loki.

Run Loki behind HTTPS ingress

If Loki and Promtail are deployed on different clusters you can add an Ingress in front of Loki. By adding a certificate you create an HTTPS endpoint. For extra security you can also enable Basic Authentication on the Ingress.

In Promtail, set the following values to communicate using HTTPS and basic authentication:

loki:
  serviceScheme: https
  user: user
  password: pass

Sample Helm template for Ingress:

apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  annotations:
    kubernetes.io/ingress.class: {{ .Values.ingress.class }}
    ingress.kubernetes.io/auth-type: "basic"
    ingress.kubernetes.io/auth-secret: {{ .Values.ingress.basic.secret }}
  name: loki
spec:
  rules:
  - host: {{ .Values.ingress.host }}
    http:
      paths:
      - backend:
          serviceName: loki
          servicePort: 3100
  tls:
  - secretName: {{ .Values.ingress.cert }}
    hosts:
    - {{ .Values.ingress.host }}

Run promtail with syslog support

In order to receive and process syslog message into promtail, the following changes will be necessary:

Review the promtail syslog-receiver configuration documentation
Configure the promtail helm chart with the syslog configuration added to the extraScrapeConfigs section and associated service definition to listen for syslog messages. For example:

extraScrapeConfigs:
  - job_name: syslog
    syslog:
      listen_address: 0.0.0.0:1514
      labels:
        job: "syslog"
  relabel_configs:
    - source_labels: ['__syslog_message_hostname']
      target_label: 'host'
syslogService:
  enabled: true
  type: LoadBalancer
  port: 1514

Run promtail with systemd-journal support

In order to receive and process syslog message into promtail, the following changes will be necessary:

Review the promtail systemd-journal configuration documentation
Configure the promtail helm chart with the systemd-journal configuration added to the extraScrapeConfigs section and volume mounts for the promtail pods to access the log files. For example:

# Add additional scrape config
extraScrapeConfigs:
  - job_name: journal
    journal:
      path: /var/log/journal
      max_age: 12h
      labels:
        job: systemd-journal
    relabel_configs:
      - source_labels: ['__journal__systemd_unit']
        target_label: 'unit'
      - source_labels: ['__journal__hostname']
        target_label: 'hostname'

# Mount journal directory into promtail pods
extraVolumes:
  - name: journal
    hostPath:
      path: /var/log/journal

extraVolumeMounts:
  - name: journal
    mountPath: /var/log/journal
    readOnly: true