DEV Community

Cover image for Deploying Loki Log Aggregation System on Ubuntu 24.04
Vultr profile image Sanskriti Harmukh
Sanskriti Harmukh for Vultr

Posted on with Aashish Chaurasiya • Originally published at docs.vultr.com

Deploying Loki Log Aggregation System on Ubuntu 24.04

#observability #docker #devops #opensource

Loki is an open-source log aggregation system from Grafana Labs that indexes only metadata labels instead of full log content, making it cost-efficient at scale. It pairs natively with Grafana and Promtail for log shipping and querying. This guide deploys Loki using Docker Compose with Traefik handling automatic HTTPS, and verifies the backend through its API endpoints. By the end, you'll have Loki ingesting and serving logs over HTTPS at your domain.

Set Up the Directory Structure

1. Create the project directory structure:

$ mkdir -p ~/loki-logging/{loki-data,loki-config}
$ cd ~/loki-logging
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

2. Set ownership for the Loki data directory:

$ sudo chown -R 10001:10001 loki-data
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

3. Create the environment file:

$ nano .env
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode 
DOMAIN=loki.example.com
LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL=admin@example.com
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

4. Create the Loki configuration file:

$ nano loki-config/loki-config.yaml
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode 
auth_enabled: false

server:
  http_listen_port: 3100

common:
  path_prefix: /loki
  storage:
    filesystem:
      chunks_directory: /loki/chunks
      rules_directory: /loki/rules
  replication_factor: 1
  ring:
    kvstore:
      store: inmemory

schema_config:
  configs:
    - from: 2020-10-24
      store: tsdb
      object_store: filesystem
      schema: v13
      index:
        prefix: index_
        period: 24h
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Deploy with Docker Compose

1. Create the Docker Compose manifest:

$ nano docker-compose.yaml
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode 
services:
  traefik:
    image: traefik:v3.6
    container_name: traefik
    command:
      - "--providers.docker=true"
      - "--providers.docker.exposedbydefault=false"
      - "--entrypoints.web.address=:80"
      - "--entrypoints.websecure.address=:443"
      - "--entrypoints.web.http.redirections.entrypoint.to=websecure"
      - "--entrypoints.web.http.redirections.entrypoint.scheme=https"
      - "--certificatesresolvers.letsencrypt.acme.httpchallenge=true"
      - "--certificatesresolvers.letsencrypt.acme.httpchallenge.entrypoint=web"
      - "--certificatesresolvers.letsencrypt.acme.email=${LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL}"
      - "--certificatesresolvers.letsencrypt.acme.storage=/letsencrypt/acme.json"
    ports:
      - "80:80"
      - "443:443"
    volumes:
      - "letsencrypt:/letsencrypt"
      - "/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro"
    restart: unless-stopped

  loki:
    image: grafana/loki:latest
    container_name: loki
    hostname: loki
    expose:
      - "3100"
    volumes:
      - "./loki-config/loki-config.yaml:/etc/loki/loki-config.yaml"
      - "./loki-data:/loki"
    command: -config.file=/etc/loki/loki-config.yaml
    labels:
      - "traefik.enable=true"
      - "traefik.http.routers.loki.rule=Host(`${DOMAIN}`)"
      - "traefik.http.routers.loki.entrypoints=websecure"
      - "traefik.http.routers.loki.tls.certresolver=letsencrypt"
    restart: unless-stopped

volumes:
  letsencrypt:
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

2. Start the services:

$ docker compose up -d
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

3. Verify the services are running:

$ docker compose ps
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

4. View the logs:

$ docker compose logs
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Access Loki

1. Check the readiness endpoint:

$ curl https://loki.example.com/ready
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

2. List the active labels:

$ curl https://loki.example.com/loki/api/v1/labels
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

3. Check the build information:

$ curl https://loki.example.com/loki/api/v1/status/buildinfo
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Next Steps

Loki is running and serving logs over HTTPS. From here you can:

  • Add Loki as a data source in Grafana for log exploration with LogQL
  • Ship logs from your servers using Promtail, Grafana Alloy, or Fluent Bit
  • Move chunk storage to S3-compatible object storage for long-term retention

For the full guide with additional tips, visit the original article on Vultr Docs.

Top comments (0)