Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana – The ELK stack
ELK Hunt
© Lead Image © welcomia, 123RF.com
A powerful search engine, a tool for processing and normalizing protocols, and another for visualizing the results – Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana form the ELK stack, which helps admins manage logfiles on high-volume systems.
Even a single, small LAMP server will produce a number of logfiles, and if you have a large array of servers, you can generally look forward to a volume of logfiles that is likely to exceed the capabilities of most built-in log management tools – if you want to analyze the data in your logs, that is. The different file formats output by the typical zoo of applications also add complexity.
The ELK stack, which is a combination of Elasticsearch [1], Logstash [2], and Kibana [3] addresses these difficulties. Elasticsearch is an extremely powerful search server that receives its data from Logstash, an application that extracts the data from server protocols, normalizes them, and dumps the results in an Elasticsearch index. Finally, the Kibana analytics and data visualization tool offers extremely flexible views of the information.
The lab environment consisted of several Debian Jessie servers, one running an ELK stack, as well as Filebeat [4], a service that acquires the local logs and sends them to Logstash. Filebeat can also collect logs from remote sources; we used it on another server that was already set up and upgraded as a central log host. The server also takes care of Syslog forwarding.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Red Hat Releases RHEL 10 Early
Red Hat quietly rolled out the official release of RHEL 10.0 a bit early.
-
openSUSE Joins End of 10
openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.
-
New Version of Flatpak Released
Flatpak 1.16.1 is now available as the latest, stable version with various improvements.
-
IBM Announces Powerhouse Linux Server
IBM has unleashed a seriously powerful Linux server with the LinuxONE Emperor 5.
-
Plasma Ends LTS Releases
The KDE Plasma development team is doing away with the LTS releases for a good reason.
-
Arch Linux Available for Windows Subsystem for Linux
If you've ever wanted to use a rolling release distribution with WSL, now's your chance.
-
System76 Releases COSMIC Alpha 7
With scores of bug fixes and a really cool workspaces feature, COSMIC is looking to soon migrate from alpha to beta.
-
OpenMandriva Lx 6.0 Available for Installation
The latest release of OpenMandriva has arrived with a new kernel, an updated Plasma desktop, and a server edition.
-
TrueNAS 25.04 Arrives with Thousands of Changes
One of the most popular Linux-based NAS solutions has rolled out the latest edition, based on Ubuntu 25.04.
-
Fedora 42 Available with Two New Spins
The latest release from the Fedora Project includes the usual updates, a new kernel, an official KDE Plasma spin, and a new System76 spin.