Filebeat quick start: installation and configuration

This guide describes how to get started quickly with log collection. You’ll learn how to:

• install Filebeat on each system you want to monitor
• specify the location of your log files
• parse log data into fields and send it to {es}
• visualize the log data in {kib}

You need Elasticsearch for storing and searching your data, and Kibana for visualizing and managing it.

Install Filebeat on all the servers you want to monitor.

To download and install Filebeat, use the commands that work with your system:

The commands shown are for AMD platforms, but ARM packages are also available. Refer to the download page for the full list of available packages.

• APT or YUM
• Download page
• Docker
• Kubernetes
• Cloud Foundry

Connections to Elasticsearch and Kibana are required to set up Filebeat.

Set the connection information in filebeat.yml. To locate this configuration file, see Directory layout.

cloud.id: "staging:dXMtZWFzdC0xLmF3cy5mb3VuZC5pbyRjZWM2ZjI2MWE3NGJmMjRjZTMzYmI4ODExYjg0Mjk0ZiRjNmMyY2E2ZDA0MjI0OWFmMGNjN2Q3YTllOTYyNTc0Mw=="
cloud.auth: "filebeat_setup:{pwd}" 1

To learn more about required roles and privileges, see Grant users access to secured resources.

There are several ways to collect log data with Filebeat:

• Data collection modules — simplify the collection, parsing, and visualization of common log formats
• ECS loggers — structure and format application logs into ECS-compatible JSON
• Manual Filebeat configuration

1. Identify the modules you need to enable. To see a list of available modules, run:

filebeat modules list
```

filebeat modules list
```

./filebeat modules list
```

./filebeat modules list
```

PS > .\filebeat.exe modules list
```

filebeat modules enable nginx
```

filebeat modules enable nginx
```

./filebeat modules enable nginx
```

./filebeat modules enable nginx
```

PS > .\filebeat.exe modules enable nginx
```

filebeat setup -e
```

filebeat setup -e
```

./filebeat setup -e
```

./filebeat setup -e
```

PS > .\filebeat.exe setup -e
```

sudo service filebeat start

sudo service filebeat start

sudo chown root filebeat.yml 1
sudo chown root modules.d/nginx.yml 1
sudo ./filebeat -e

sudo chown root filebeat.yml 1
sudo chown root modules.d/nginx.yml 1
sudo ./filebeat -e

PS C:\Program Files\filebeat> Start-Service filebeat

Filebeat should begin streaming events to Elasticsearch.

Filebeat comes with pre-built Kibana dashboards and UIs for visualizing log data. You loaded the dashboards earlier when you ran the setup command.

To open the dashboards:

1. Launch Kibana:

   <div class="tabs" data-tab-group="host">
   <div role="tablist" aria-label="Open Kibana">
   <button role="tab"
   aria-selected="true"
   aria-controls="cloud-tab-open-kibana"
   id="cloud-open-kibana">
   Elasticsearch Service
   </button>
   <button role="tab"
   aria-selected="false"
   aria-controls="self-managed-tab-open-kibana"
   id="self-managed-open-kibana"
   tabindex="-1">
   Self-managed
   </button>
   </div>
   <div tabindex="0"
   role="tabpanel"
   id="cloud-tab-open-kibana"
   aria-labelledby="cloud-open-kibana">

   1. Log in to your Elastic Cloud account.
   2. Navigate to the Kibana endpoint in your deployment.

   </div>
   <div tabindex="0"
   role="tabpanel"
   id="self-managed-tab-open-kibana"
   aria-labelledby="self-managed-open-kibana"
   hidden="">
   Point your browser to http://localhost:5601, replacing localhost with the name of the Kibana host.

   </div>
   </div>

2. In the side navigation, click Discover. To see Filebeat data, make sure the predefined filebeat-* data view is selected.

   Tip

   If you don’t see data in Kibana, try changing the time filter to a larger range. By default, Kibana shows the last 15 minutes.

3. In the side navigation, click Dashboard, then select the dashboard that you want to open.

The dashboards are provided as examples. We recommend that you customize them to meet your needs.

Now that you have your logs streaming into Elasticsearch, learn how to unify your logs, metrics, uptime, and application performance data.

1. Ingest data from other sources by installing and configuring other Elastic Beats:

   Elastic Beats	To capture
   Metricbeat	Infrastructure metrics
   Winlogbeat	Windows event logs
   Heartbeat	Uptime information
   APM	Application performance metrics
   Auditbeat	Audit events

2. Use the Observability apps in Kibana to search across all your data:

   Elastic apps	Use to
   Metrics app	Explore metrics about systems and services across your ecosystem
   Logs app	Tail related log data in real time
   Uptime app	Monitor availability issues across your apps and services
   APM app	Monitor application performance
   SIEM app	Analyze security events