Deployment Modes

Deployment Modes

Monolithic mode

• All components (distributor, ingester, querier, compactor, etc.) run in a single process
• Will work up to ~20GB/day
• Can be horizontally scaled by adding instances to the ring cluster — requires shared object storage
• Good for: local docker-compose setup, dev/test environments, small projects
• Simplest to configure — one values.yaml file, one deployment
• Drawback: no ability to independently scale individual components (e.g., you cannot add just ingesters)

Simple Scalable

Simple Scalable Deployment (SSD) mode is being deprecated. The timeline for the deprecation is to be determined (TBD), but will happen before Loki 4.0 is released.

• Default deployment mode (since Loki 3.0)
• Three targets: read, write, and backend
  • write — distributor, ingester
  • read — query frontend, querier
  • backend — compactor, ruler, index gateway, bloom gateway
• Can handle up to several TB/day. Above that, microservices mode is recommended

Microservices mode

• Microservices mode
• Each component (distributor, ingester, querier, query-frontend, compactor, ruler, index-gateway) runs as a separate deployment/service
• Full control over scaling — each component scaled independently (e.g., more ingesters during peak hours)
• Recommended for volume > several TB/day or when precise resource control is required
• Drawback: significantly more complex configuration and maintenance — requires knowledge of each component
• In practice, mainly used by large organizations (e.g., Grafana Cloud)