Getting Started with the LOGIQ PaaS Community Edition
Tags: devops, analytics, monitoring, kubernetes
Published: 2021-06-24 14:30:30

If you’ve been looking for an inexpensive way to run your own observability stack while maintaining complete control over your data and its security, look no further. The LOGIQ PaaS Community Edition is officially live!

With the LOGIQ PaaS Community Edition, you can:

- Self-host your observability stack on a cloud provider of your choice – public or private 
- Ingest up to **50GB** of log data **per day** with **unlimited data retention**
- Store your log data on any S3-compatible cloud provider via the built-in Minio S3 service
- Ingest logs from Syslog, RSyslog, Logstash, Fluent, AWS Firelens, JSON, and **plenty more**
- Run up to **4 ingest worker** processes

You’ll also get access to all of the LOGIQ Enterprise Edition’s features along with Community Support, **free forever**.

![The LOGIQ UI](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/l5bqcmn5z8zyjygvm0vb.gif)

What’s more? Deploying LOGIQ PaaS is ridiculously easy! This article will show you exactly how you can deploy the LOGIQ PaaS Community Edition on your Kubernetes cluster.

## Before you begin

To get you up and running with the LOGIQ PaaS Community Edition quickly, we’ve made LOGIQ PaaS’ Kubernetes components available as [Helm](https://helm.sh/) Charts. To deploy LOGIQ PaaS, you’ll need access to a Kubernetes cluster and Helm 3.

Before you start deploying LOGIQ PaaS, let’s run through a few quick steps to set up your environment correctly.

### Add the LOGIQ Helm repository

Add LOGIQ’s Helm repository to your Helm repositories by running the following command.

```
helm repo add logiq-repo https://logiqai.github.io/helm-charts
```

The Helm repository you just added is named logiq-repo. Whenever you install charts from this repository, ensure that you use the repository name as the prefix in your install command, as shown below.

```
helm install <deployment_name> logiq-repo/<chart_name>
```

You can now search for the Helm charts available in the repository by running the following command.

```
helm search repo logiq-repo
```

Running this command displays a list of the available Helm charts along with their details, as shown below.

```
$ helm repo update
$ helm search repo logiq-repo
NAME                CHART VERSION    APP VERSION    DESCRIPTION
logiq-repo/logiq    2.2.11           2.1.11         LOGIQ Observability HELM chart for Kubernetes
```

If you’ve already added LOGIQ’s Helm repository in the past, you can update the repository by running the following command.

```
helm repo update
```

### Create a namespace to deploy LOGIQ PaaS
Create a namespace where we’ll deploy LOGIQ PaaS by running the following command.

```
kubectl create namespace logiq
```

Running the command shown above creates a namespace named `logiq`. You can also name your namespace differently by replacing `logiq` with the name of your choice in the command above. In case you do, remember to use the same namespace for the rest of the instructions listed in this guide.

**Important**: Ensure that the name of the namespace is not more than 15 characters in length.

### Prepare your Values file

Just as any other package deployed via Helm charts, you can configure your LOGIG PaaS deployment using a Values file. The Values file acts as the Helm chart’s API, giving it access to values to populate the Helm chart’s templates.

To give you a head start with configuring your LOGIQ deployment, we’ve provided sample `values.yaml` files for small, medium, and large clusters. You can use these files as a base for configuring your LOGIQ deployment. You can download these files from the following links. 

- [`values.small.yaml`](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/gitbook-28427.appspot.com/o/assets%2F-LmzGprckLqwd5v6bs6m%2F-MOSfp6X1_SPwV_8AGhv%2F-MOSh7NloEncIi1LjUyh%2Fvalues.small.yaml?alt=media&token=83d76953-0854-4a48-a3a8-0591aded0bc6) for small clusters.
- [`values.medium.yaml`](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/gitbook-28427.appspot.com/o/assets%2F-LmzGprckLqwd5v6bs6m%2F-MQ3BQwto2mGZmAgEveP%2F-MQ3BW2mk4SRtFYNkQ2B%2Fvalues.medium.yaml?alt=media&token=95ffa9d0-a736-4213-9425-1b5ff7fa3178) for medium clusters.
- [`values.large.yaml`](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/gitbook-28427.appspot.com/o/assets%2F-LmzGprckLqwd5v6bs6m%2F-MQ3BQwto2mGZmAgEveP%2F-MQ3BXv1S-DqlVCWRpOw%2Fvalues.large.yaml?alt=media&token=7d4772bf-39e0-4030-8620-1de1a64aed99) for large clusters.

You can pass the `values.yaml` file with the helm install command using the `-f` flag, as shown in the following example. 

```
helm install logiq --namespace logiq --set global.persistence.storageClass=<storage_class_name> logiq-repo/logiq -f values.small.yaml
```

### Read and accept the EULA

As a final step, you should read our [End User’s License Agreement](https://docs.logiq.ai/eula/eula) and accept its terms before you proceed with deploying LOGIQ PaaS. 

### Latest LOGIQ PaaS component versions

The following table lists the latest version tags for all LOGIQ components.

| Image | Version |
|---|---|
| `logiq-flash` | 2.1.11.27 |
| `coffee` | 2.1.17.4 |
| `logiq` Helm chart | 2.2.11 |

### Install LOGIQ PaaS
Now that your environment is ready, you can proceed with installing LOGIQ PaaS in it. To install LOGIQ PaaS, run the following command.

```
helm install logiq --namespace logiq --set global.persistence.storageClass=<storage class name> logiq-repo/logiq
```

Running the above command installs LOGIQ PaaS and exposes its services and UI on the ingress’ IP address. Accessing the ingress’ IP address in a web browser of your choice takes you to the LOGIQ PaaS login screen, as shown in the following image. 

![The LOGIQ login screen](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/zn31ild6u6k6oijbxivn.png)

If you haven’t changed any of the admin settings in the values.yaml file you used during deployment, you can log into the LOGIQ PaaS UI using the following default credentials. 

- **Username**: `flash-admin@foo.com`
- **Password**: `flash-password`

**Note**: You can change the default login credentials after you’ve logged into the UI.

Your LOGIQ PaaS instance is now deployed and ready for use. Your LOGIQ instance enables you to ingest and tail logs, index and query log data, and provides search capabilities. Along with the LOGIQ UI, you can also access these features via LOGIQ’s CLI, [logiqctl](https://docs.logiq.ai/logiq-cli). 

Now that you have full access to your very own LOGIQ PaaS instance, you should try using it to amplify your observability practices. You can use LOGIQ to [observe your Kubernetes clusters](https://logiq.ai/k8s/), [set up centralised observability for your CI/CD pipelines](https://logiq.ai/jenkins-log-analysis-with-logiq/), [monitor your applications and infrastructure](https://logiq.ai/monitoring/), or even tail and analyse logs from [AWS CloudWatch](https://logiq.ai/how-to-stream-aws-cloudwatch-logs-to-logiq/) or other data sources – all without the pricing shock that the usual log management and analysis solutions provide.

Do drop a comment or [reach out to us](https://logiq.ai/contact) if you’d like to know more about how LOGIQ PaaS can help you deliver always-on applications and infrastructure at scale through efficient log management and analysis.