1. Proposed title of this feature request

Long-term log retention / archival

2. What is the nature and description of the request?

I want to have the ability to store logs for long / very long periods of time, for archival and compliance. I do not need the ability to query these logs regularly, but do need to have a clear way to get logs for a certain period, and then query them in some form. Ideally we wouldn't want there to be a limit to the amount of time. We might end up with very large amounts of data (multiple TB compressed), so we need a way to filter logs by period without filtering every single log. We do not have any importance as to the format the data is stored (TSBD format, JSONL, NFS/CIFS, S3), as long as reasonable compression is applied, it can deal with the volume of logs and there is a known way to access them and it can be stored in a disconnected environment.

3. Why does the customer need this? (List the business requirements here)

We need this for a few reasons, but mainly these are requirements that have been put forth for us. Example us cases are: - A bug is discovered in hindsight and we need to check where it started. - If some bug/event happens and a "post-mortem" needs to happen weeks/months after it happened. - We run into a bug that we have run into in the past, and want to compare it. (Other potential use cases can be legal requirements and general archival)

4. List any affected packages or components.

This affects the cluster-logging operator and/or the loki-operator.