ELK Stack
In depthMonitoring
Also known as: Elastic Stack, Elasticsearch-Logstash-Kibana
Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana combined to collect, store and visualise logs.
ELK Stack, explained
Written by EduVerseWhat it is
The ELK Stack is a combination of three tools that handle logs together. Logstash collects and reshapes log lines, Elasticsearch stores and indexes them for fast search, and Kibana is the web interface where you search and build charts. Small shippers such as Filebeat often feed the logs in.
Why teams use it
When an app runs on many servers or containers, reading log files one machine at a time is hopeless, and containers may be gone before you look. Central logging puts everything in one searchable place, so you can follow a single request across services and spot patterns in errors.
An example from work
A customer reports that their payment failed around 14:05. In Kibana you filter on that time window and the customer’s order id, and find a timeout from the payment service followed by a retry that never happened. Without central logs you’d be logging into servers one by one.
Our own explanation, not a quote from the book.
In the book
Sentences from The Software Realm, Decoded that mention ELK Stack, exactly as printed.
1 more passages about ELK Stack in the full book
Read every conversation where ELK Stack comes up, with the interactive slides and demos.
Where it fits
Centralised log management and analysis
Coverage in the book
Covered in depth: multiple pages with explanations, examples and simulations.
