WARNING: Version 5.3 of Beats has passed its EOL date.
This documentation is no longer being maintained and may be removed. If you are running this version, we strongly advise you to upgrade. For the latest information, see the current release documentation.
Getting Started with Beats and the Elastic Stack
editGetting Started with Beats and the Elastic Stack
editLooking for an "ELK tutorial" that shows how to set up the Elastic stack for Beats? You’ve come to the right place. The topics in this section describe how to install and configure the Elastic stack for Beats.
A regular Beats setup consists of:
- Elasticsearch for storage and indexing. See Installing Elasticsearch.
- Logstash (optional) for inserting data into Elasticsearch. See Installing Logstash.
- Kibana for the UI. See Installing Kibana.
- One or more Beats. You install the Beats on your servers to capture operational data. See Installing Beats.
- Kibana dashboards for visualizing the data.
See the Elastic Support Matrix for information about supported operating systems and product compatibility.
To get started, you can install Elasticsearch and Kibana on a single VM or even on your laptop. The only condition is that the machine must be accessible from the servers you want to monitor. As you add more Beats and your traffic grows, you’ll want to replace the single Elasticsearch instance with a cluster. You’ll probably also want to automate the installation process.