How Does the ELK Stack Work?

Introduction

If you’re using or planning to use Elasticsearch, you may have heard about the ELK stack, also known as the Elastic stack. The acronym “ELK” refers to Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana– three products that can join forces to offer powerful end-to-end log analysis. With the ELK stack, you can search, analyze and visualize log data in real time. At this point, you might be asking yourself, “How does the ELK stack work?” Fortunately, we can help you answer that question. In this article, we’ll be taking a closer look at the ELK stack and explain what makes it such a popular choice for log analysis.

ELK Stack Components

As we mentioned earlier, the ELK Stack is made up of three components: Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana. While each of these products serves an important purpose individually, their real power is best harnessed when used together. Let’s take a moment to discuss what each member of this trio is designed to do:

• Elasticsearch: This tool is used to index, store and extract your data. Elasticsearch offers full text search, real-time analytics, scalability and high availability, making it a terrific solution for all your data-extraction needs.

• Logstash: No matter what type of logs you’re currently managing, they can be processed by Logstash. This tool is a workhorse, able to collect and parse logs and then send them to Elasticsearch for indexing.

• Kibana: This front-end dashboard allows you to visualize your data using pie charts, graphs, scatter plots, maps and more. With Kibana, it’s easy to spot emerging patterns and trends in big data sets that would otherwise be tedious to plow through.

What Sets It Apart

What makes the ELK stack so popular? One key factor is its simplicity. The stack offers a simple yet robust platform for log management and analysis. Another selling point is the fact that it’s open source. Open source products are usually at the forefront of innovation, with dedicated users rolling out new features and fixing any issues as they come up, and they tend to come with strong and active community support. Last but not least, the ELK stack’s affordable price undoubtedly plays a part in its popularity. Not every company needs enterprise-level solutions for log analysis; it’s no surprise that more and more organizations are realizing that they can live without a few bells and whistles and opting for the ELK stack. With the stack, they can enjoy powerful log management and analytics for a fraction of the cost.

Why Log Analysis Matters

In today’s business landscape, even a second of downtime matters. That’s why engineers depend on data generated by applications and infrastructure, usually in the form of metrics and event logs. There was a time when log analysis was pretty straightforward: An engineer would access a machine, grab a log file and grep it. Those days are long over, with many environments now generating multiple terabytes of log data per day. What organizations need today is a powerful, centralized solution that can handle both log management and log analysis in real time. Enter the ELK stack. The products that make up the stack allow users to collect logs from multiple sources and parse those logs in order to extract meaningful data that can be analyzed. After log data has been collected and parsed, the stack allows for the storage, searching and visualization of log data. The trio of Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana were specifically designed to play well with each other– that’s an important aspect of the answer to the question “How does the ELK stack work?” However, your organization’s design and implementation of the stack will depend on your environment and the details of your use case.

Conclusion

There’s no doubt that the ELK Stack– Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana– offers a powerful data analytics platform at an affordable price point. Throughout this article, we’ve discussed the role that each of these components plays in the data pipeline, hoping to answer the question “How does the ELK stack work?”. With the information we’ve shared, you’ll be better prepared to make an informed decision about the Elastic Stack and how it can serve your organization’s needs.