Most teams think of data lakes as cold storage. A long-term archive. A place to keep logs “just in case” while budgets tighten and ingest volumes rise. Functional, sure. But limited. The traditional data lake keeps everything, helps occasionally, and rarely fits the way analysts work.
Graylog approaches the data lake differently. In Graylog 7.0, the data lake is not a warehouse. It is a pressure release valve for teams overwhelmed by storage cost, investigation delays, and cloud data sprawl. It gives analysts direct access to long term data without slowing searches or triggering surprise invoices. It delivers clarity where teams usually face risk.
This shift matters because the cost and volume challenges are growing quickly. IBM’s 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report notes that long term data retention remains one of the top cost drivers for security teams. Both point to the same need: teams want lower costs without losing evidence. Graylog 7.0 responds with a practical model that respects the analyst workflow and the budget reality at the same time.
Cost Control That Keeps Context Alive
Graylog introduced the internal data lake to solve a simple but painful problem. Many logs are important for investigations but do not need to count against a SIEM license. Storing everything hot drives costs up. Dropping logs removes context forever. Neither path works for modern teams.
The data lake offers a third path. Logs can land in inexpensive storage where they stay searchable, previewable, and recoverable. Analysts decide what to retrieve, not the billing model. When a search touches cold data, Graylog flags it. When the analyst previews it, there is no license hit. When the analyst retrieves a narrow slice for analysis, only that slice moves into active storage. The result is control instead of tradeoffs, especially for cloud heavy environments where transfer and storage fees compound quickly.
A Workflow Designed for Pressure Moments
During the Graylog 7.0 walkthrough, Seth Goldhammer demonstrated how the data lake interacts with an investigation. The preview pane shows the exact records in AWS Security Lake or the internal lake without delaying the search. The analyst can scroll through events, confirm relevance, and pull the important entries into the investigation record. No separate tool. No external console. No long term ingest commitments.
This matters for lean teams. Analysts get big picture clarity without spending cycles on archive queries or storage tiers. They stay in the same screen while pulling in the evidence that matters. The workflow removes friction and preserves focus during pressure moments.
Industry trends support the significance of this design. Cisco’s 2024 Cybersecurity Readiness Index research calls out the ongoing fragmentation between cloud logs and SIEM workflows as a leading cause of delayed investigations. Analysts need context close at hand. Graylog gives them that context without forcing organizations to pay for every log twice.
Cloud Scale Without Cloud Surprises
Graylog 7.0 extends the same data lake workflow to external cloud sources. Teams preview logs directly inside Graylog before retrieving them from AWS Security Lake. If the analyst is troubleshooting a Lambda function or validating suspicious activity, they see exactly what is stored in the cloud. They decide what to pull and what to leave. The tiering stays predictable. The storage bill stays predictable. And most important, the investigation stays intact.
A Practical Stance on Data Volume
Graylog believes that long term data should support investigations instead of exhausting budgets. The data lake in 7.0 reflects that belief. It respects analyst time. It respects financial constraints. And it respects the importance of full historical context during security incidents.
Teams gain the freedom to store more without paying more. Analysts gain the freedom to see more without working more. And organizations gain confidence in their long term retention posture.
To see the data lake workflow in action along with all the new capabilities in the release, watch the Graylog 7.0 Webinar Replay.
