For platform and observability teams, certain logs are little more than digital clutter—health check pings, forgotten DEBUG statements, or verbose INFO messages from seldom-used services. These log lines not only add noise but also inflate cloud costs. Until recently, removing them required cumbersome infrastructure changes. Now, with the public preview of drop rules in Grafana Cloud’s Adaptive Logs, teams can define custom rules to discard low-value logs before they are ingested, reducing both noise and expenses instantly.
What Are Drop Rules?
Drop rules give you the power to create precise logic that drops unwanted log lines before they reach Grafana Cloud Logs. You can base these rules on any combination of log labels, detected log levels, or line content. This flexibility means you can target exactly the noise you want to eliminate without affecting critical data. The feature is now in public preview and works alongside existing optimization capabilities in Adaptive Metrics and Adaptive Traces, allowing you to supplement intelligent recommendations with your own custom inputs.
Practical Examples of Drop Rules
Here are common scenarios where drop rules can make an immediate impact:
Drop Logs by Level
If your logging budget is being eaten by DEBUG logs that serve no operational purpose, create a rule that drops all DEBUG-level logs. This single rule can slash ingestion volume across your entire environment.
Sample Chatty, Repetitive Logs
Sometimes you don’t want to eliminate a log entirely but need to reduce its frequency. Drop rules let you specify a drop percentage—for example, drop 90% of a repetitive log pattern—keeping a representative sample for debugging while cutting costs.
Target a Noisy Service
When a specific service suddenly starts generating high-volume, low-value logs, you can target it by combining a label selector (e.g., service=my-service) with other criteria like log level or a text string. This allows precise removal without affecting other services.
How Drop Rules Fit into Adaptive Logs
Adaptive Logs uses a three‑step pipeline to manage log volume. When a log line arrives, it is evaluated in this order:
- Exemptions – Protected logs (e.g., audit trails) pass through untouched. If a log matches an exemption, no further processing occurs.
- Drop rules – Rules are evaluated in priority order. The first matching rule applies its drop rate (0% to 100%). If a rule drops the log, it is discarded immediately.
- Patterns – Optimization recommendations (suggested by Adaptive Logs) can be applied to remaining log lines that were neither exempted nor dropped.
This ordered pipeline ensures that your drop rules are executed before any automated recommendations, giving you full control over what is considered noise.
Drop Rules, Recommendations, and Exemptions: A Complete System
Drop rules are one part of a holistic log cost management strategy. Each mechanism serves a distinct purpose:
- Drop rules eliminate known noise. For example, a platform team can create a single rule with a 100% drop rate for health check logs, enforcing that standard across all services without requiring individual teams to change their logging configuration.
- Recommendations (patterns) help you identify and optimize repetitive or high‑volume logs that you might not have noticed. These are AI‑driven suggestions that you can apply or ignore.
- Exemptions ensure that critical logs (like security events) are never dropped, regardless of any rules or recommendations.
Together, these three components give you a flexible and powerful toolkit to manage log costs without sacrificing visibility where it matters.
Ready to start reducing noise and saving money? Check out the official documentation to learn how to set up your first drop rule.