Logging and tracing

In this section, we will learn about the popular logging solutions in the cloud-native ecosystem and how to get a logging stack quickly up and running.

Handling logs for applications running on Kubernetes is quite different than traditional application log handling. With monolithic applications, when a server or an application crashes, our server can still retain logs. In Kubernetes, a new pod is scheduled when a pod crashes, causing the old pod and its records to get wiped out. The main difference with containerized applications is how and where we ship and store our logs for future use.

Two cloud-native-focused popular logging stacks are the Elasticsearch, Fluentd, and Kibana (EFK) stack and the Promtail, Loki, and Grafana (PLG) stack. Both have fundamental design and architectural differences. The EFK stack uses Elasticsearch as an object store, Fluentd for log routing and aggregation, and Kibana for the visualization of logs. The PLG stack is based on...