Deploying Loki Log Aggregation System on Ubuntu 24.04

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, following log aggregation deployment practices documented in Vultr Docs.

Set Up the Directory Structure

1. Create the project directory structure:

$ mkdir -p ~/loki-logging/{loki-data,loki-config}
$ cd ~/loki-logging

2. Set ownership for the Loki data directory:

$ sudo chown -R 10001:10001 loki-data

3. Create the environment file:

$ nano .env

DOMAIN=loki.example.com
LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL=admin@example.com

4. Create the Loki configuration file:

$ nano loki-config/loki-config.yaml

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

Deploy with Docker Compose

1. Create the Docker Compose manifest:

$ nano docker-compose.yaml

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:

2. Start the services:

$ docker compose up -d

3. Verify the services are running:

$ docker compose ps

4. View the logs:

$ docker compose logs

Access Loki

1. Check the readiness endpoint:

$ curl https://loki.example.com/ready

2. List the active labels:

$ curl https://loki.example.com/loki/api/v1/labels

3. Check the build information:

$ curl https://loki.example.com/loki/api/v1/status/buildinfo

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.