Hey, Is OpenStack Swift is a supported object storage backend for Loki, Tempo and Mimir?
Since MinIO is licensed now, so looking for some reliable backend.
This is from official grafana documentation
Loki → Swift appears in configuration parameters but is not listed as a recommended production backend in the official Loki storage docs. The documented supported object storage backends are GCS, S3, Azure Blob, IBM COS, Alibaba OSS, and Baidu BOS. Ref: Storage | Grafana Loki documentation
Mimir → Swift is officially supported and documented with a full configuration example. Ref: Configure Grafana Mimir object storage backend | Grafana Mimir documentation
Tempo → Swift is not supported. Tempo only supports S3 (and S3-compatible systems), GCS, and Azure Blob Storage. Ref: Object storage | Grafana Tempo documentation
My personal recommendation for S3-compatible alternatives to MinIO (especially for Tempo):
Since Tempo requires an S3-compatible backend, here are two fully open source options worth considering:
- Ceph with S3 API → widely used in production, fully open source, and works as a drop-in S3 replacement for all three → Loki, Tempo, and Mimir.
- SeaweedFS → lightweight, open source, S3-compatible, and a good fit if you want something simpler than Ceph to operate.
You are right, it is shows as supported in the Loki’s configuration parameters. Grafana Loki configuration parameters | Grafana Loki documentation
For the sake of simplicity, is it wiser to use SeaweedFS or Ceph for Loki, Tempo and Mimir?
Loki and Mimir explicitly support any S3-compatible storage as a backend per official Grafana docs. Tempo supports S3-compatible storage with MinIO explicitly mentioned as an example. So both SeaweedFS and Ceph should work since both provide S3-compatible APIs.
My personal recommendation →
For simplicity, SeaweedFS is lighter and easier to operate. For production scale and reliability, Ceph is more battle-tested. The choice depends on your team’s operational capacity.
Always test your chosen backend thoroughly with Loki, Tempo, and Mimir before going to production.