Learning Elastic Stack 6.0

Pranav Shukla, Sharath Kumar M N, Saurabh Chhajed, Marcelo Ochoa

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781787281868
• eBook ISBN: 9781787285866
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencia de la computación
• Subtopic: Modelado y diseño de datos

Deliver end-to-end real-time distributed data processing solutions by leveraging the power of Elastic Stack 6.0

Key Features

• - Get to grips with the new features introduced in Elastic Stack 6.0
• - Get valuable insights from your data by working with the different components of the Elastic stack such as Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana, X-Pack, and Beats
• - Includes handy tips and techniques to build, deploy and manage your Elastic applications efficiently on-premise or on the cloud

Book Description

The Elastic Stack is a powerful combination of tools for distributed search, analytics, logging, and visualization of data from medium to massive data sets. The newly released Elastic Stack 6.0 brings new features and capabilities that empower users to find unique, actionable insights through these techniques. This book will give you a fundamental understanding of what the stack is all about, and how to use it efficiently to build powerful real-time data processing applications.

After a quick overview of the newly introduced features in Elastic Stack 6.0, you'll learn how to set up the stack by installing the tools, and see their basic configurations. Then it shows you how to use Elasticsearch for distributed searching and analytics, along with Logstash for logging, and Kibana for data visualization. It also demonstrates the creation of custom plugins using Kibana and Beats. You'll find out about Elastic X-Pack, a useful extension for effective security and monitoring. We also provide useful tips on how to use the Elastic Cloud and deploy the Elastic Stack in production environments.

On completing this book, you'll have a solid foundational knowledge of the basic Elastic Stack functionalities. You'll also have a good understanding of the role of each component in the stack to solve different data processing problems.

What you will learn

• - Familiarize yourself with the different components of the Elastic Stack
• - Get to know the new functionalities introduced in Elastic Stack 6.0
• - Effectively build your data pipeline to get data from terabytes or petabytes of data into Elasticsearch and Logstash for searching and logging
• - Use Kibana to visualize data and tell data stories in real-time
• - Secure, monitor, and use the alerting and reporting capabilities of Elastic Stack
• - Take your Elastic application to an on-premise or cloud-based production environment

Who this book is for

This book is for data professionals who want to get amazing insights and business metrics from their data sources. If you want to get a fundamental understanding of the Elastic Stack for distributed, real-time processing of data, this book will help you. A fundamental knowledge of JSON would be useful, but is not mandatory. No previous experience with the Elastic Stack is required.

Elastic X-Pack

X-Pack is an Elastic Stack extension that bundles security, alerting, monitoring, reporting, machine learning, and graph capabilities into one easy-to-install package. It adds essential features to make Elastic Stack production ready. Unlike the components of Elastic Stack, which are open source, X-Pack is a commercial offering from Elastic.co, and so it requires a paid license for usage. When you install X-Pack for the first time, you are given a 30-day trial. The basic or free version will provide only monitoring and Dev Tools such as Search Profiler and Grok Debugger. Even though X-Pack comes as a bundle, it allows one to easily enable or disable the features one wants to use.

In this chapter, let's explore the following topics:

• Installing X-Pack on Elasticsearch and Kibana
• Securing Elasticsearch and Kibana
• Monitoring Elasticsearch
• Exploring alerting

Installing X-Pack

As X-Pack is an extension of Elastic Stack, prior to installing X-Pack, you need to have both Elasticsearch and Kibana installed. You must run the version of X-Pack that matches the version of Elasticsearch and Kibana.

Installing X-Pack on Elasticsearch

X-Pack is installed just like any plugin to extend Elasticsearch.

These are the steps to install X-Pack in Elasticsearch:

1. Navigate to the ES_HOME folder.
2. Install X-Pack using the following command:

$ ES_HOME> bin/elasticsearch-plugin install x-pack

During installation, it will ask you to grant extra permissions to X-Pack, which are required by Watcher to send email alerts and also to enable Elasticsearch to launch the machine learning analytical engine. Specify y to continue the installation or N to abort the installation.

You should get the following logs/prompts during installation:

-> Downloading x-pack from elastic
[=================================================] 100% 
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ WARNING: plugin requires additional permissions @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
* java.io.FilePermission \\.\pipe\* read,write
* java.lang.RuntimePermission accessClassInPackage.com.sun.activation.registries
* java.lang.RuntimePermission getClassLoader
* java.lang.RuntimePermission setContextClassLoader
* java.lang.RuntimePermission setFactory
* java.net.SocketPermission * connect,accept,resolve
* java.security.SecurityPermission createPolicy.JavaPolicy
* java.security.SecurityPermission getPolicy
* java.security.SecurityPermission putProviderProperty.BC
* java.security.SecurityPermission setPolicy
* java.util.PropertyPermission * read,write
* java.util.PropertyPermission sun.nio.ch.bugLevel write
See http://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/guides/security/permissions.html
for descriptions of what these permissions allow and the associated risks.

Continue with installation? [y/N]y
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ WARNING: plugin forks a native controller @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
This plugin launches a native controller that is not subject to the Java
security manager nor to system call filters.

Continue with installation? [y/N]y
Elasticsearch keystore is required by plugin [x-pack], creating...
-> Installed x-pack

3. Restart Elasticsearch:

$ ES_HOME> bin/elasticsearch  

4. Generate the passwords for the default/reserved users—elastic, kibana, and logstash_system—by executing this command:

$ ES_HOME>bin/x-pack/setup-passwords interactive

You should get the following logs/prompts to enter the password for the reserved/default users:

Initiating the setup of reserved user elastic,kibana,logstash_system passwords.
You will be prompted to enter passwords as the process progresses.
Please confirm that you would like to continue [y/N]y
Enter password for [elastic]: elastic
Reenter password for [elastic]: elastic
Enter password for [kibana]: kibana
Reenter password for [kibana]:kibana
Enter password for [logstash_system]: logstash
Reenter password for [logstash_system]: logstash
Changed password for user [kibana]
Changed password for user [logstash_system]
Changed password for user [elastic]

Please make a not...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Credits
• Disclaimer
• About the Authors
• About the Reviewer
• www.PacktPub.com
• Customer Feedback
• Preface
• Introducing Elastic Stack
• Getting Started with Elasticsearch
• Searching-What is Relevant
• Analytics with Elasticsearch
• Analyzing Log Data
• Building Data Pipelines with Logstash
• Visualizing data with Kibana
• Elastic X-Pack
• Running Elastic Stack in Production
• Building a Sensor Data Analytics Application
• Monitoring Server Infrastructure