Homelab Observability Stack: Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, ELK

The goal wasn't just "install Grafana" — it was to build a stack that mirrors what an SRE or detection engineer would actually operate, and use it as the foundation for a security layer on top of standard observability.

What's running

• Prometheus + Grafana for metrics and dashboards
• Loki for log aggregation, paired with Promtail
• ELK for a second, comparative log pipeline
• Falco for runtime detection, feeding alerts that turn raw observability data into a detection pipeline rather than just a monitoring one

The framing that made this click

Security-focused platform engineering isn't a pivot away from DevOps/SRE — it's a layer on top of it. Falco rules only matter if the underlying metrics and logs pipeline is solid first.