Design a high-level logging system

Q: Design a high-level logging system

This System Design question evaluates a candidate's ability to design scalable, reliable centralized logging and observability infrastructure, covering distributed systems concepts such as ingestion, durable storage, querying/indexing, access control, and multi-tenant separation.

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Question

Design a high-level centralized logging system for a company.

Assume many services (microservices, batch jobs) running across multiple hosts/containers need to emit logs. The system should:

Ingest logs from many producers.
Store logs durably with retention.
Support querying/filtering by time range, service, host, log level, request/trace ID.
Handle bursts and partial outages.
Provide basic access control and multi-tenant separation (e.g., by team/environment).

Describe the architecture, key components, data model/indexing strategy, scaling approach, and reliability considerations. No diagram is required, but be clear about data flow.

Design a high-level logging system

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Solution

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