Grafana Loki vs. Splunk Enterprise

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

I'm liking the newer products, and I'm looking forward to how they integrate with the overall product when they come together. Just log in and be able to query a large number of systems for similar issues or a unique one. That is a great fit for Splunk Enterprise, looking for a simple case or a simple String or something of that nature across multiple machines. It's a great fit for that to identify issues or particular software, whatever your scenario is, String, to find it across any particular server or group of servers, so that you can update or do a deployment or whatever it is you're looking to do.

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

• It is very useful in creating custom rules for analyzing system logs and display relevant information. The query language is very easy to learn.
• We can create custom UI to visualize the output of our data. The interface is very flexible. It also allows the sharing of rules among users.
• There is an open online community to help others. Stackoverflow also has a splunk community. These resources make it more convenient to learn.

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

• Splunk light limits number of users to 5. Wish there was a flexible license, where one could add more users.
• Splunk light does not let you add > few realtime alerts. Wish there was a flexible license, where one could add as many realtime alerts as wanted.
• Better insight into daily ingestion values

Incentivized

We are using Splunk extensively in our projects and we have recently upgraded to Splunk version 6.0 which is quite efficient and giving expected results. We keep track of updates and new features Splunk introduces periodically and try to introduce those features in our day to day activities for improvement in our reporting system and other tasks.

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

You can literally throw in a single word into Splunk and it will pull back all instances of that word across all of your logs for the time span you select (provided you have permission to see that data). We have several users who have taken a few of the free courses from Splunk that are able to pull data out of it everyday with little help at all.

Incentivized

When properly setup and configured, Splunk is extremely reliable.

Incentivized

Splunk maintains a well resourced support system that has been consistent since we purchased the product. They help out in a timely manner and provide expert level information as needed. We typically open cases online and communicate when possible via e-mail and are able to resolve most issues with that method.

Incentivized

The online course was simple clear and described the main capabilities of the solution. There is also an initial module that can be done for free so anyone can familiarize themselves with the functionality of this solution. On the other hand, however, there could be more free online courses. Maybe even with a certificate, this would broaden the group of people who are familiar with the platform while increasing familiarity with the solution itself.

Smooth without too many major issues.

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

A lot of products have natively inside their own dashboards and or their own logging repositories. And each one is difficult to learn or they're too complex or they're not verbose in the sense that they're not easy to mine the data that you're looking for. So that could be anything from the native logging that you find in other Cisco products. It's easier to use Splunk to draw the data that you're looking for as opposed to going to the individual's products themselves to get the logs that you're looking for.

Incentivized

Splunk can scale in to the petabyte per day range which of course is awesome

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

Incentivized

• Splunk has allowed developers to diagnose production issues when access of control was taken away from them to be allowed to view items in production environments and I believe that is invaluable.
• At times some developers weren't super happy about using it, but it was more of the fact that they were used to having production access and not creating their splunk queries to get information.
• Going one place to view logs was very beneficial to have.

Incentivized