How to Install and Configure Elasticsearch and Kibana for ELK Stack

Introduction

Elasticsearch is a highly scalable open‑source full‑text search and analytics engine that stores, searches, and analyzes large volumes of data in near real‑time. Kibana provides a web‑based graphical interface for visualizing and exploring data stored in Elasticsearch.

Elasticsearch Installation

1. Download and extract Elasticsearch

Download URL: https://www.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch

Use the following command to download the package:

wget https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-5.2.1.tar.gz

Extract the archive: tar -xvf elasticsearch-5.2.1.tar.gz Enter the extracted directory and start Elasticsearch:

./elasticsearch

If no error messages appear, Elasticsearch has started successfully.

Link Logstash with Elasticsearch

Modify the logstash.conf file from the previous tutorial to set the output to Elasticsearch and add two filter plugins (details omitted). Save the file.

Start Filebeat:

/filebeat -e -c filebeat.yml -d "publish"

Start Logstash:

bin/logstash -f logstash.conf

Verify Elasticsearch response (screenshot omitted).

Kibana Installation and Usage

1. Download and extract Kibana

Download URL: https://www.elastic.co/downloads/kibana

Download with wget and extract:

tar -xvf kibana-5.2.1-linux-x86_64.tar.gz

2. Configure Kibana

Edit config/kibana.yml:

Set server.host: 0.0.0.0 to bind to all interfaces.

Set elasticsearch.url: "http://localhost:9200" to connect to the local Elasticsearch instance.

3. Start Kibana

Run the following command in the bin directory:

./kibana

Kibana listens on port 5601. Access it via a browser at http://192.168.1.220:5601 .

After logging in, create an index pattern to view logs generated by your applications (e.g., Tomcat). If no logs appear, ensure the application is producing logs.

Conclusion

The tutorial demonstrates a complete, minimal setup of the ELK stack on a Linux server: installing Elasticsearch, linking it with Logstash, installing and configuring Kibana, and visualizing logs through the Kibana UI.