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
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.
-
Go-Based Botnet Attacking IoT Devices
Using an SSH credential brute-force attack, the Go-based PumaBot is exploiting IoT devices everywhere.
-
Plasma 6.5 Promises Better Memory Optimization
With the stable Plasma 6.4 on the horizon, KDE has a few new tricks up its sleeve for Plasma 6.5.
-
KaOS 2025.05 Officially Qt5 Free
If you're a fan of independent Linux distributions, the team behind KaOS is proud to announce the latest iteration that includes kernel 6.14 and KDE's Plasma 6.3.5.
-
Linux Kernel 6.15 Now Available
The latest Linux kernel is now available with several new features/improvements and the usual bug fixes.
-
Microsoft Makes Surprising WSL Announcement
In a move that might surprise some users, Microsoft has made Windows Subsystem for Linux open source.
-
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.