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Installing and Configuring ELK Stack — Part 1
Hello, my digital adventurers! In this article, I will provide you with a step-by-step guide for installing and configuring the ELK Stack. Since this is the first part, upcoming articles will cover installing ELK agents, setting up integrations, and additional configurations.
Before we begin, let’s take a closer look at what ELK actually is.
What is ELK?
The ELK Stack is a popular open-source solution for managing and analyzing logs, consisting of ElasticSearch, LogStash, and Kibana. It helps organizations collect data from various sources, process it in real-time, and visualize insights through user-friendly dashboards.
- ElasticSearch: A distributed, JSON-based search and analytics engine built on Apache Lucene, designed for storing and indexing data to enable fast querying and analysis.
- LogStash: A data processing pipeline that collects data from multiple sources, transforms it (e.g., parsing, enriching), and forwards it to destinations like ElasticSearch.
- Kibana: A user-friendly web interface for visualizing and exploring data stored in ElasticSearch. It offers dashboards, graphs, and other visualization tools, enabling users to create reports and monitor application and infrastructure performance.
Prerequisites for Installing ELK
For this guide, I will install and configure ELK on an Ubuntu machine with the following specifications:
- Operating System: Ubuntu Server 22.04
- CPU: 2 vCPUs
- RAM: 6GB
- Storage: 50GB
These resources are suitable for small to medium-scale log processing. However, if you plan to process a high volume of logs, consider increasing CPU, RAM, and storage.
If you don’t know how to install Ubuntu Server, feel free to check out my article for a detailed guide.
