Grafana Loki vs. SolarWinds Papertrail

Grafana Loki can compile data logs for easy exploration of a service and enable quick troubleshooting and error tracing for engineers who may not have deeper access. However, Loki is dependent on the service logging complexity, which, depending on the logger, may not be robust enough and limit the value offered.

Incentivized

As a 3rd party endpoint, SolarWinds Papertrail did exactly what it needed to. My hesitation is on the technical aptitude of the colleague receiving the recommendation, as the overall level of command line skill/understanding would have to be high. Web applications are a great solution here, but MOST of them already provide some sort of logging output. The scenario would definitely be in the situation where logging wasn't readily available in the current solution space. IF something like SolarWinds Papertrail was needed, it's probably the de facto thing that I would recommend.

Incentivized

• Access to many open-source dashboards, access to add many data-sources to gather and visualize data from.
• Grafana Loki does well gathering of logs from various data-sources, we can also filter the logs based on our needs.
• One stop solution for all the logs and monitoring.

Incentivized

• Free configuration on how Papertrail will alert you
• Easy to setup with your server/application
• Very intuitive and easy to use
• Fair pricing policy/plan

Incentivized

• Learning curve is very steep
• Longer term log insight is a challenge
• Very easy on AWS, integration with other systems can be more of a challenge

Incentivized

• The CLI was a bit clunky and required some Linux-y thought to get right (obviously more designed with scripting in mind)
• Tracking logs in real time (think something like `tail`) wasn't wildly intuitive
• Accessing/searching archives required a lot of CLI-style pulling/extracting/reg-exing

Incentivized

We are definitely going to continue using Papertrail. It's been a lifesaver.

Incentivized

Grafana Loki makes accessing and viewing service logs easy for engineers who may not be familiar with going into service. However, useability can be limited if engineers are unaware of what the queries should look like or where in the service to direct Loki to look for logging.

Incentivized

It's extremely easy to use. I and new colleagues have never had any issues configuring this tool or setting it up, it works almost out of the box with very simple instructions to follow to configure it to our own environment. I would highly recommend it on that ability alone.

Incentivized

I honestly have never had the need to use the support team, as we have not run into any issues so far. If we did however, judging from how the tool itself works, I don't doubt that the team would provide excellent support for any issues that we may possibly run into.

Incentivized

First and foremost if Grafana Loki is based on CNCF open source projects so organizations can get freedom to choice to configure it at your own other main thing is Grafana Loki is totally free of cost and we can deploy it on our infrastructure. On compared with other managed services like Datadog, New Relic it is very expensive and we also don't have much control on the tools we use.

Incentivized

CloudWatch, by itself, is terrible at search. CloudWatch Insights works great and has powerful search capabilities, but it's more difficult to set up alerts. Also, because Insights charges per search, you have the potential to accumulate a large bill if you need to do many searches. I like that SolarWinds Papertrail has a known monthly cost.

Incentivized

• Company wide (realtime) insights in complex aws setup is great
• Dashboarding options are easily set up

Incentivized

• SolarWinds Papertrail cost compared to the benefits it provides is a win.
• When the logs are flooded, and the monthly limits are reached, the failure to post new logs may be a significant drawback.
• The great search/filter capabilities is key for speedy and precise debugging of incidents that may happen during testing and operation.

Incentivized