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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.

Open source

Install Grafana Loki with Tanka

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Tanka is a reimplementation of Ksonnet that Grafana Labs created after Ksonnet was deprecated. Tanka is used by Grafana Labs to run Grafana Loki in production.

The Tanka installation runs the Loki cluster in microservices mode.

Prerequisites

Install the latest version of Tanka (version v0.17.1 or a more recent version) for the tk env commands. Prebuilt binaries for Tanka can be found at the Tanka releases URL.

In your config repo, if you don’t have a Tanka application, create a folder and call tk init inside of it. Then create an environment for Loki and provide the URL for the Kubernetes API server to deploy to (e.g., https://localhost:6443):

mkdir <application name>
cd <application name>
tk init
tk env add environments/loki --namespace=loki --server=<Kubernetes API server>

Install jsonnet-bundler (jb), find instructions for your platform in Tanka’s installation docs.

Deploying

Download and install the Loki and Promtail module using jb (version v0.4.0 or a more recent version):

bash
jb init  # not required if you already ran `tk init`
jb install github.com/grafana/loki/production/ksonnet/loki@main
jb install github.com/grafana/loki/production/ksonnet/promtail@main

Revise the YAML contents of environments/loki/main.jsonnet, updating these variables:

  • Update the username, password, and the relevant htpasswd variable values.
  • Update the S3 or GCS variable values, depending on your object storage type. See storage_config for more configuration details.
  • Remove from the configuration the S3 or GCS object storage variables that are not part of your setup.
  • Update the value of boltdb_shipper_shared_store to the type of object storage you are using. Options are gcs, s3, azure, or filesystem. Update the object_store variable under the schema_config section to the same value.
  • Update the Promtail configuration container_root_path variable’s value to reflect your root path for the Docker daemon. Run docker info | grep "Root Dir" to acquire your root path.
  • Update the from value in the Loki schema_config section to no more than 14 days prior to the current date. The from date represents the first day for which the schema_config section is valid. For example, if today is 2021-01-15, set from to 2021-01-01. This recommendation is based on Loki’s default acceptance of log lines up to 14 days in the past. The reject_old_samples_max_age configuration variable controls the acceptance range.
jsonnet
local gateway = import 'loki/gateway.libsonnet';
local loki = import 'loki/loki.libsonnet';
local promtail = import 'promtail/promtail.libsonnet';

loki + promtail + gateway {
  _config+:: {
    namespace: 'loki',
    htpasswd_contents: 'loki:$apr1$H4yGiGNg$ssl5/NymaGFRUvxIV1Nyr.',

    // S3 variables -- Remove if not using s3
    storage_backend: 's3,dynamodb',
    s3_access_key: 'key',
    s3_secret_access_key: 'secret access key',
    s3_address: 'url',
    s3_bucket_name: 'loki-test',
    dynamodb_region: 'region',

    // GCS variables -- Remove if not using gcs
    storage_backend: 'bigtable,gcs',
    bigtable_instance: 'instance',
    bigtable_project: 'project',
    gcs_bucket_name: 'bucket',

    //Set this variable based on the type of object storage you're using.
    boltdb_shipper_shared_store: 'my-object-storage-backend-type',

    //Update the object_store and from fields
    loki+: {
      schema_config: {
        configs: [{
          from: 'YYYY-MM-DD',
          store: 'boltdb-shipper',
          object_store: 'my-object-storage-backend-type',
          schema: 'v11',
          index: {
            prefix: '%s_index_' % $._config.table_prefix,
            period: '%dh' % $._config.index_period_hours,
          },
        }],
      },
    },

    //Update the container_root_path if necessary
    promtail_config+: {
      clients: [{
        scheme:: 'http',
        hostname:: 'gateway.%(namespace)s.svc' % $._config,
        username:: 'loki',
        password:: 'password',
        container_root_path:: '/var/lib/docker',
      }],
    },

    replication_factor: 3,
    consul_replicas: 1,
  },
}

Run tk show environments/loki to see the manifests that will be deployed to the cluster. Run tk apply environments/loki to deploy the manifests.