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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.

Documentationbreadcrumb arrow Grafana Loki documentationbreadcrumb arrow Visualize
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Visualize log data

Modern Grafana versions after 6.3 have built-in support for Grafana Loki and LogQL.

Using Explore

  1. Log into your Grafana instance. If this is your first time running Grafana, the username and password are both defaulted to admin.
  2. In Grafana, go to Connections > Data Sources via the cog icon on the left sidebar.
  3. Click the big + Add a new data source button.
  4. Search for, or choose Loki from the list.
  5. The http URL field should be the address of your Loki server. For example, when running locally or with Docker using port mapping, the address is likely http://localhost:3100. When running with docker-compose or Kubernetes, the address is likely http://loki:3100.
    When running Grafana (with Docker) and trying to connect to a locally built Loki instance, the address (for the URL field) is:
    On Mac: docker.for.mac.localhost
    On Windows: docker.for.win.localhost
  6. To see the logs, click Explore on the sidebar, select the Loki data source in the top-left dropdown, and then choose a log stream using the Log labels button.
  7. Learn more about querying by reading about Loki’s query language LogQL.

If you would like to see an example of this live, you can try Grafana Play’s Explore feature

Read more about Grafana’s Explore feature in the Grafana documentation and on how to search and filter for logs with Loki.

Using Grafana Dashboards

Because Loki can be used as a built-in data source above, we can use LogQL queries based on that datasource to build complex visualizations that persist on Grafana dashboards.

Give it a try using Grafana Play
Give it a try using Grafana Play

With Grafana Play, you can explore and see how it works, learning from practical examples to accelerate your development. This feature can be seen on Loki Example Grafana Dashboard.

Try it

Read more about how to build Grafana Dashboards in build your first dashbboard

To configure Loki as a data source via provisioning, see Configuring Grafana via Provisioning. Set the URL in the provisioning.