Loki

Loki is a horizontally scalable, highly available, multi-tenant log aggregation system developed by Grafana Labs. It distinguishes itself by indexing only metadata (labels) rather than the full log content, making it cost-effective and operationally simpler than traditional log systems like…

Key facts

First appeared
2018
Category
cloud_infrastructure
Problem solved
Traditional log aggregation systems (e.g., Elasticsearch, Splunk) are resource-intensive and expensive due to full-text indexing, making them complex to operate at scale. Loki was created to solve the problem of cost-effectively storing and querying application logs at scale, particularly in cloud-native environments, by only indexing log metadata and relying on inexpensive object storage for raw log data.
Platforms
Linux, Kubernetes, Docker

Related technologies

Notable users

  • Grafana Labs
  • Numerous companies leveraging cloud-native infrastructure and Kubernetes for their logging needs. Specific public user lists are not extensively published, but its integration with Grafana and Prometheus makes it a popular choice in the CNCF ecosystem.