Metricbeat quick start: installation and configuration

Metricbeat helps you monitor your servers and the services they host by collecting metrics from the operating system and services.

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

• install Metricbeat on each system you want to monitor
• specify the metrics you want to collect
• send the metrics to {es}
• visualize the metrics data in {kib}

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

Install Metricbeat as close as possible to the service you want to monitor. For example, if you have four servers with MySQL running, it’s recommended that you run Metricbeat on each server. This allows Metricbeat to access your service from localhost and does not cause any additional network traffic or prevent Metricbeat from collecting metrics when there are network problems. Metrics from multiple Metricbeat instances will be combined on the Elasticsearch server.

To download and install Metricbeat, 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 Metricbeat.

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

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

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

Metricbeat uses modules to collect metrics. Each module defines the basic logic for collecting data from a specific service, such as Redis or MySQL. A module consists of metricsets that fetch and structure the data. Read How Metricbeat works to learn more.

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

metricbeat modules list
```

metricbeat modules list
```

./metricbeat modules list
```

./metricbeat modules list
```

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

metricbeat modules enable nginx
```

metricbeat modules enable nginx
```

./metricbeat modules enable nginx
```

./metricbeat modules enable nginx
```

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

metricbeat setup -e
```

metricbeat setup -e
```

./metricbeat setup -e
```

./metricbeat setup -e
```

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

sudo service metricbeat start

sudo service metricbeat start

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

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

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

Metricbeat should begin streaming metrics to Elasticsearch.

Metricbeat 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 Metricbeat data, make sure the predefined metricbeat-* 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 infrastructure metrics 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
   Filebeat	Logs
   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