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Install the simple scalable Helm chart

This Helm Chart deploys Grafana Loki in simple scalable mode within a Kubernetes cluster.

This chart configures Loki to run read, write, and backend targets in a scalable mode. Loki’s simple scalable deployment mode separates execution paths into read, write, and backend targets.

The default Helm chart deploys the following components:

  • Read component (3 replicas)
  • Write component (3 replicas)
  • Backend component (3 replicas)
  • Loki Canary (1 DaemonSet)
  • Gateway (1 NGINX replica)
  • Minio (optional, if minio.enabled=true)
  • Index and Chunk cache (1 replica)

Note

We do not recommended running scalable mode with filesystem storage. For the purpose of this guide, we will use MinIO as the object storage to provide a complete example.

Prerequisites

  • Helm 3 or above. See Installing Helm.
  • A running Kubernetes cluster (must have at least 3 nodes).

Deploying the Helm chart for development and testing

The following steps show how to deploy the Loki Helm chart in simple scalable mode using the included MinIO as the storage backend. Our recommendation is to start here for development and testing purposes. Then configure Loki with an object storage provider when moving to production.

  1. Add Grafana’s chart repository to Helm:

    bash 
    helm repo add grafana https://grafana.github.io/helm-charts

  2. Update the chart repository:

    bash 
    helm repo update

  3. Create the configuration file values.yaml. The example below illustrates how to deploy Loki in test mode using MinIO as storage:

    yaml 
      loki:
    schemaConfig:
      configs:
        - from: "2024-04-01"
          store: tsdb
          object_store: s3
          schema: v13
          index:
            prefix: loki_index_
            period: 24h
    ingester:
      chunk_encoding: snappy
    querier:
      # Default is 4, if you have enough memory and CPU you can increase, reduce if OOMing
      max_concurrent: 4
    pattern_ingester:
      enabled: true
    limits_config:
      allow_structured_metadata: true
      volume_enabled: true
      retention_period: 672h
    compactor:
      retention_enabled: true 
      delete_request_store: s3

  deploymentMode: SimpleScalable

  backend:
    replicas: 2
  read:
    replicas: 2
  write:
    replicas: 3 # To ensure data durability with replication

  # Enable minio for storage
  minio:
    enabled: true

  gateway:
    service:
      type: LoadBalancer

  4. Install or upgrade the Loki deployment.

    • To install:
      bash 
      helm install --values values.yaml loki grafana/loki
    • To upgrade:
      bash 
      helm upgrade --values values.yaml loki grafana/loki

Object Storage Configuration

After testing Loki with MinIO, we recommend configuring Loki with an object storage provider. The following examples shows how to configure Loki with different object storage providers:

Caution

When deploying Loki using S3 Storage DO NOT use the default bucket names; chunk, ruler and admin. Choose a unique name for each bucket. For more information see the following security update. This caution does not apply when you are using MinIO. When using MinIO we recommend using the default bucket names.

To configure other storage providers, refer to the Helm Chart Reference.

Next Steps