ContextQMD
Back to Loki

Send log data to Loki

docs/sources/send-data/_index.md

3.7.14.7 KB
Original Source

Send log data to Loki

There are a number of different clients available to send log data to Loki. While all clients can be used simultaneously to cover multiple use cases, which client is initially picked to send logs depends on your use case.

{{< youtube id="xtEppndO7F8" >}}

Grafana Clients

The following clients are developed and supported (for those customers who have purchased a support contract) by Grafana Labs for sending logs to Loki:

  • Grafana Alloy - Grafana Alloy is a vendor-neutral distribution of the OpenTelemetry (OTel) Collector. Alloy offers native pipelines for OTel, Prometheus, Pyroscope, Loki, and many other metrics, logs, traces, and profile tools. In addition, you can use Alloy pipelines to do different tasks, such as configure alert rules in Loki and Mimir. Alloy is fully compatible with the OTel Collector and Prometheus Agent. You can use Alloy as an alternative to either of these solutions or combine it into a hybrid system of multiple collectors and agents. You can deploy Alloy anywhere within your IT infrastructure and pair it with your Grafana LGTM stack, a telemetry backend from Grafana Cloud, or any other compatible backend from any other vendor.
  • xk6-loki extension - The k6-loki extension lets you perform load testing on Loki.

OpenTelemetry Collector

Loki natively supports ingesting OpenTelemetry logs over HTTP. For more information, see Ingesting logs to Loki using OpenTelemetry Collector.

Third-party clients

The following clients have been developed by the Loki community or other third-parties and can be used to send log data to Loki.

{{< admonition type="note" >}} Grafana Labs cannot provide support for third-party clients. Once an issue has been determined to be with the client and not Loki, it is the responsibility of the customer to work with the associated vendor or project for bug fixes to these clients. {{< /admonition >}}

The following are popular third-party Loki clients:

  • Docker Driver - When using Docker and not Kubernetes, the Docker logging driver for Loki should be used as it automatically adds labels appropriate to the running container.
  • Fluent Bit - The Fluent Bit plugin is ideal when you already have Fluentd deployed and you already have configured Parser and Filter plugins.
  • Fluentd - The Fluentd plugin is ideal when you already have Fluentd deployed and you already have configured Parser and Filter plugins. Fluentd also works well for extracting metrics from logs when using itsPrometheus plugin.
  • Logstash - If you are already using logstash and/or beats, this will be the easiest way to start. By adding our output plugin you can quickly try Loki without doing big configuration changes.

These third-party clients also enable sending logs to Loki: