Visualizing Logs in ElasticSearch or Grafan-Loki

ElasticSearch

ElasticSearch is a backendd Engine that ingrests the logs stream from different sources and saves them for visualizations. The Kibana component is used to visualize and maintain logs for proper display.

Grafana-Loki

Grafana-Loki requires a working Grafana Server for visualizing the logs streams.

Add Loki as Input

• Click on the Gear Icon in bottom-right corner and select plugins

• 

• search for the "loki" in the plugins list.
• and setup the configuration parameters.

• 

• Once done, click save and test.

For an easy to use dashboard for logs, please follow these steps.

1. Login to  Grafana  using Administrator account ( normally this is admin  with password setup during bootstrapping )
2. Click on the 4-square Icon in the left-panel and Select Dashboards

3. 

4. Click New

   

5. and then select Import
6. Input the Dashboard ID 13639  and select the Loki as Source. Tthis method requires a direct access to the internet from the Grafana instance. You can also download the JSON from grafana dashboards website and import using import as Json mechanism.

View the Logs.

• Select the 4-squares Icon and then select Dashboards,
• Select the Name of the Dashboard that was created in previous step.
• This dashboard has a drop down menu at the top, which gives you the flexibility of viewing logs for a specific pod.

You can also create Your own Dashboard for different hierarchically viewing by clicking Add Dashboard and selecting loki as source.