Grafana Loki is a horizontally-scalable log aggregation system. Unlike Elasticsearch, it indexes only metadata (labels), not the full text.
What You Get for Free
- No full-text indexing — stores compressed logs cheaply
- Label-based querying with LogQL
- Native Grafana integration
- Multi-tenancy — built-in tenant isolation
- S3/GCS backend — cheap object storage
Query Logs with LogQL
{job="nginx"} |= "error" | json | status >= 500
Why Loki Over Elasticsearch?
| Feature | Loki | Elasticsearch |
|---|---|---|
| Storage cost | 10-50x cheaper | Expensive |
| Setup | Minutes | Hours |
| Best for | Logs + Grafana | Full-text search |
Need observability infrastructure? Check my work on GitHub or email spinov001@gmail.com for consulting.
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