Logrotate and Docker: Why and How?

2025-09-05

Introduction

Logrotate is a powerful tool for log management in Linux, but its interaction with Docker has its own specifics. This guide explains how to properly use logrotate with Docker containers and when it’s better to rely on Docker’s built-in log management tools.

Docker Containers and Logs

Docker collects logs from the standard output streams (stdout and stderr) of containers and, by default, stores them as JSON files:

/var/lib/docker/containers/\<container\_id>/\<container\_id>-json.log

If a container generates a lot of logs, these files can take up gigabytes and quickly consume all available disk space.

059 | Loki + Grafana: A Lightweight and Cost-Effective Logging Solution for the Cloud

2025-07-21

Loki + Grafana: A Lightweight and Cost-Effective Logging Solution for the Cloud

We’re wrapping up our series on centralized logging with a modern and innovative solution: Loki together with Grafana. Developed by Grafana Labs, this stack reimagines how logging works — making it simple, efficient, and especially appealing for those already using Prometheus.

What Is Loki and How Does It Work?

Loki is a log aggregation system designed to minimize resource usage. It indexes only metadata (labels), while the log messages themselves are stored in compressed form — following the same philosophy as Prometheus, but for logs.

058 | Graylog: A Flexible and User-Friendly Log Management Solution

2025-07-20

Graylog: A Flexible and User-Friendly Log Management Solution

We’ve already covered ELK Stack and OpenSearch — powerful logging tools with scalable architectures. Now let’s take a look at Graylog — a dedicated log management platform offering convenience, powerful processing, and flexible alerting.

What Is Graylog and How Does It Work?

Graylog is a centralized log management system designed for ease of use and rich capabilities. Unlike the ELK Stack, Graylog was built from the ground up as a unified platform.

057 | OpenSearch (Formerly Open-Source ELK): A Community-Driven Alternative

2025-07-19

We’ve explored the ELK Stack, its power — and, unfortunately, its licensing changes. These changes sparked debate within the open-source community and led to the creation of a worthy alternative — OpenSearch.

OpenSearch is a fully open-source fork of the last open versions of Elasticsearch and Kibana, released under the Apache 2.0 license. The project was initiated by Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2021 and has since evolved as an independent open-source initiative under the OpenSearch Project.

056 | ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana): The Classic Stack for Log Collection and Analysis

2025-07-18

ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana): The Classic Stack for Log Collection and Analysis

After establishing that centralized logging is not just a convenience but a necessity, it’s time to dive into specific tools. Let’s start with one of the most well-known and widely adopted solutions in the logging world — the ELK Stack.

The ELK Stack is a set of three open-source components developed by Elastic. It provides a powerful, flexible, and scalable solution for log collection, processing, storage, search, and visualization.