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.
Overview
Grafana Loki is a log aggregation tool, and it is the core of a fully-featured logging stack.
Loki is a datastore optimized for efficiently holding log data. The efficient indexing of log data distinguishes Loki from other logging systems. Unlike other logging systems, a Loki index is built from labels, leaving the original log message unindexed.
An agent (also called a client) acquires logs, turns the logs into streams, and pushes the streams to Loki through an HTTP API. The Promtail agent is designed for Loki installations, but many other Agents seamlessly integrate with Loki.
Loki indexes streams. Each stream identifies a set of logs associated with a unique set of labels. A quality set of labels is key to the creation of an index that is both compact and allows for efficient query execution.
LogQL is the query language for Loki.
Loki features
Efficient memory usage for indexing the logs
By indexing on a set of labels, the index can be significantly smaller than other log aggregation products. Less memory makes it less expensive to operate.
Multi-tenancy
Loki allows multiple tenants to utilize a single Loki instance. The data of distinct tenants is completely isolated from other tentants. Multi-tenancy is configured by assigning a tenant ID in the agent.
LogQL, Loki’s query language
Users of the Prometheus query language, PromQL, will find LogQL familiar and flexible for generating queries against the logs. The language also facilitates the generation of metrics from log data, a powerful feature that goes well beyond log aggregation.
Scalability
Loki works well at small scale. In single process mode, all required microservices run in one process. Single process mode is great for testing Loki, running it locally, or running it at a small scale.
Loki is also designed to scale out for large scale installations. Each of the Loki’s microservice components can be broken out into separate processes, and configuration permits individual scaling of the components.
Flexibility
Many agents (clients) have plugin support. This allows a current observability structure to add Loki as their log aggregation tool without needing to switch existing portions of the observability stack.
Grafana integration
Loki seamlessly integrates with Grafana, providing a complete observability stack.
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