Resources Generating Excessive INFO Logs

Yuval Goldstein

CER:

GCP-Other-3116

Service Category

Other

Cloud Provider

GCP

Service Name

GCP Cloud Logging

Inefficiency Type

Excessive Log Verbosity

Explanation

Some GCP services and workloads generate INFO-level logs at very high frequencies — for example, load balancers logging every HTTP request or GKE nodes logging system health messages. While valuable for debugging, these logs can flood Cloud Logging with non-critical data. Without log-level tuning or exclusion filters, organizations incur continuous ingestion charges for messages that are seldom analyzed. Over time, this behavior compounds into a persistent waste driver across large-scale environments.

Relevant Billing Model

Cloud Logging costs are driven by data ingestion volume and storage retention. Excessive INFO-level logs increase both metrics, especially when emitted by high-traffic resources such as API endpoints, Kubernetes clusters, or compute instances. Since these logs rarely indicate actionable events, their ingestion often yields limited operational value.

Detection

Identify resources or services with log ingestion volumes significantly above expected baselines
Correlate ingestion costs with log severity levels to determine if INFO logs dominate total volume
Review application or service configurations that define log verbosity levels
Assess whether INFO-level logs provide measurable operational value or simply duplicate metrics already available through monitoring

Remediation

Adjust log verbosity in resource configurations or application code to emit fewer INFO-level messages
Apply Logging sink filters or exclusions to prevent ingestion of repetitive INFO logs
Aggregate high-volume INFO logs into sampled or summarized events where detailed records are unnecessary
Establish logging standards that define appropriate verbosity levels for each environment and service type

Relevant Documentation

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