Observability · Flashcard
What does Grafana Loki actually index for each log entry?
- AOnly its labels; the log content is stored compressed, not indexed
- BEvery word of the log line, giving Elasticsearch-style full-text search
- CEvery numeric value parsed out of the log line as a metric series
- DEvery trace and span id, building a distributed-tracing index
Why this is the answer
Loki indexes only labels and keeps raw content compressed in object storage, which is why it is far cheaper than full-text systems. Indexing every word describes Elasticsearch, not Loki. Loki does not turn lines into metric series at ingest. It builds no trace index; trace ids are just content.
Official docs