Install Kibana on Windows

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Kibana can be installed on Windows using the .zip package.

This package is free to use under the Elastic license. It contains open source and free commercial features and access to paid commercial features. Start a 30-day trial to try out all of the paid commercial features. See the Subscriptions page for information about Elastic license levels.

The latest stable version of Kibana can be found on the Download Kibana page. Other versions can be found on the Past Releases page.

Download and install the .zip package

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Download the .zip windows archive for Kibana v7.3.2 from https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/kibana/kibana-7.3.2-windows-x86_64.zip

Unzip it with your favourite unzip tool. This will create a folder called kibana-7.3.2-windows-x86_64, which we will refer to as $KIBANA_HOME. In a terminal window, CD to the $KIBANA_HOME directory, for instance:

CD c:\kibana-7.3.2-windows-x86_64

Alternatively, you can download the following package, which contains only features that are available under the Apache 2.0 license: https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/kibana/kibana-oss-7.3.2-windows-x86_64.zip

Running Kibana from the command line

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Kibana can be started from the command line as follows:

.\bin\kibana.bat

By default, Kibana runs in the foreground, prints its logs to STDOUT, and can be stopped by pressing Ctrl-C.

Configuring Kibana via config file

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Kibana loads its configuration from the $KIBANA_HOME/config/kibana.yml file by default. The format of this config file is explained in Configuring Kibana.

Directory layout of .zip archive

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The .zip package is entirely self-contained. All files and directories are, by default, contained within $KIBANA_HOME — the directory created when unpacking the archive.

This is very convenient because you don’t have to create any directories to start using Kibana, and uninstalling Kibana is as easy as removing the $KIBANA_HOME directory. However, it is advisable to change the default locations of the config and data directories so that you do not delete important data later on.

Type Description Default Location Setting

home

Kibana home directory or $KIBANA_HOME

Directory created by unpacking the archive

bin

Binary scripts including kibana to start the Kibana server and kibana-plugin to install plugins

$KIBANA_HOME\bin

config

Configuration files including kibana.yml

$KIBANA_HOME\config

data

The location of the data files written to disk by Kibana and its plugins

$KIBANA_HOME\data

optimize

Transpiled source code. Certain administrative actions (e.g. plugin install) result in the source code being retranspiled on the fly.

$KIBANA_HOME\optimize

plugins

Plugin files location. Each plugin will be contained in a subdirectory.

$KIBANA_HOME\plugins