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Run the latest version of theElastic stack with Docker and Docker Compose.

It gives you the ability to analyze any data set by using the searching/aggregation capabilities of Elasticsearch andthe visualization power of Kibana.

ℹ️ The Docker images backing this stack includeStack Features (formerly X-Pack)withpaid features enabled by default (seeHow to disable paidfeatures to disable them). Thetrial license is valid for 30 days.

Based on the official Docker images from Elastic:

• Elasticsearch
• Logstash
• Kibana

Other available stack variants:

• searchguard: Search Guard support

1. Requirements
   • Host setup
   • SELinux
   • Docker for Desktop
     • Windows
     • macOS
2. Usage
   • Bringing up the stack
   • Cleanup
   • Initial setup
     • Setting up user authentication
     • Injecting data
     • Default Kibana index pattern creation
3. Configuration
   • How to configure Elasticsearch
   • How to configure Kibana
   • How to configure Logstash
   • How to disable paid features
   • How to scale out the Elasticsearch cluster
4. Extensibility
   • How to add plugins
   • How to enable the provided extensions
5. JVM tuning
   • How to specify the amount of memory used by a service
   • How to enable a remote JMX connection to a service
6. Going further
   • Using a newer stack version
   • Plugins and integrations
   • Swarm mode

• Docker Engine version17.05+
• Docker Compose version1.12.0+
• 1.5 GB of RAM

By default, the stack exposes the following ports:

• 5000: Logstash TCP input
• 9200: Elasticsearch HTTP
• 9300: Elasticsearch TCP transport
• 5601: Kibana

ℹ️ Elasticsearch'sbootstrap checks were purposely disabled to facilitate thesetup of the Elastic stack in development environments. For production setups, we recommend users to set up their hostaccording to the instructions from the Elasticsearch documentation:Important System Configuration.

On distributions which have SELinux enabled out-of-the-box you will need to either re-context the files or set SELinuxinto Permissive mode in order for docker-elk to start properly. For example on Redhat and CentOS, the following willapply the proper context:

$chcon -R system_u:object_r:admin_home_t:s0 docker-elk/

Ensure theShared Drives feature is enabled for theC: drive.

The default Docker for Mac configuration allows mounting files from/Users/,/Volumes/,/private/, and/tmpexclusively. Make sure the repository is cloned in one of those locations or follow the instructions from thedocumentation to add more locations.

Clone this repository, then start the stack using Docker Compose:

$docker-compose up

You can also run all services in the background (detached mode) by adding the-d flag to the above command.

ℹ️ You must rundocker-compose build first whenever you switch branch or update a base image.

If you are starting the stack for the very first time, please read the section below attentively.

Elasticsearch data is persisted inside a volume by default.

In order to entirely shutdown the stack and remove all persisted data, use the following Docker Compose command:

$docker-compose down -v

ℹ️ Refer toHow to disable paid features to disable authentication.

The stack is pre-configured with the followingprivileged bootstrap user:

• user:elastic
• password:changeme

Although all stack components work out-of-the-box with this user, we strongly recommend using the unprivilegedbuilt-inusers instead for increased security. Passwords for these users must be initialized:

$docker-composeexec -T elasticsearch bin/elasticsearch-setup-passwords auto --batch

Passwords for all 6 built-in users will be randomly generated. Take note of them and replace theelastic username withkibana andlogstash_system inside the Kibana and Logstash configuration files respectively. See theConfiguration section below.

ℹ️ Do not use thelogstash_system user inside the Logstashpipeline file, it does not havesufficient permissions to create indices. Follow the instructions atConfiguring Security in Logstashto create a user with suitable roles.

Restart Kibana and Logstash to apply the passwords you just wrote to the configuration files.

$docker-compose restart kibana logstash

ℹ️ Learn more about the security of the Elastic stack atTutorial: Getting started withsecurity.

Give Kibana about a minute to initialize, then access the Kibana web UI by hittinghttp://localhost:5601 with a web browser and use the following default credentials to log in:

• user:elastic
• password:<your generated elastic password>

Now that the stack is running, you can go ahead and inject some log entries. The shipped Logstash configuration allowsyou to send content via TCP:

$nc localhost 5000< /path/to/logfile.log

You can also load the sample data provided by your Kibana installation.

When Kibana launches for the first time, it is not configured with any index pattern.

ℹ️ You need to inject data into Logstash before being able to configure a Logstash index pattern viathe Kibana web UI. Then all you have to do is hit theCreate button.

Refer toConnect Kibana with Elasticsearch for detailed instructions about the index patternconfiguration.

Create an index pattern via the Kibana API:

$curl -XPOST -D-'http://localhost:5601/api/saved_objects/index-pattern' \    -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \    -H 'kbn-version: 7.4.1' \    -u elastic:<your generated elastic password> \    -d '{"attributes":{"title":"logstash-*","timeFieldName":"@timestamp"}}'

The created pattern will automatically be marked as the default index pattern as soon as the Kibana UI is opened for the first time.

ℹ️ Configuration is not dynamically reloaded, you will need to restart individual components afterany configuration change.

The Elasticsearch configuration is stored inelasticsearch/config/elasticsearch.yml.

You can also specify the options you want to override by setting environment variables inside the Compose file:

elasticsearch:environment:network.host:_non_loopback_cluster.name:my-cluster

Please refer to the following documentation page for more details about how to configure Elasticsearch inside Dockercontainers:Install Elasticsearch with Docker.

The Kibana default configuration is stored inkibana/config/kibana.yml.

It is also possible to map the entireconfig directory instead of a single file.

Please refer to the following documentation page for more details about how to configure Kibana inside Dockercontainers:Running Kibana on Docker.

The Logstash configuration is stored inlogstash/config/logstash.yml.

It is also possible to map the entireconfig directory instead of a single file, however you must be aware thatLogstash will be expecting alog4j2.properties file for its own logging.

Please refer to the following documentation page for more details about how to configure Logstash inside Dockercontainers:Configuring Logstash for Docker.

Switch the value of Elasticsearch'sxpack.license.self_generated.type option fromtrial tobasic (seeLicensesettings).

Follow the instructions from the Wiki:Scaling out Elasticsearch

To add plugins to any ELK component you have to:

1. Add aRUN statement to the correspondingDockerfile (eg.RUN logstash-plugin install logstash-filter-json)
2. Add the associated plugin code configuration to the service configuration (eg. Logstash input/output)
3. Rebuild the images using thedocker-compose build command

A few extensions are available inside theextensions directory. These extensions provide features whichare not part of the standard Elastic stack, but can be used to enrich it with extra integrations.

The documentation for these extensions is provided inside each individual subdirectory, on a per-extension basis. Someof them require manual changes to the default ELK configuration.

By default, both Elasticsearch and Logstash start with1/4 of the total hostmemory allocated tothe JVM Heap Size.

The startup scripts for Elasticsearch and Logstash can append extra JVM options from the value of an environmentvariable, allowing the user to adjust the amount of memory that can be used by each component:

To accomodate environments where memory is scarce (Docker for Mac has only 2 GB available by default), the Heap Sizeallocation is capped by default to 256MB per service in thedocker-compose.yml file. If you want to override thedefault JVM configuration, edit the matching environment variable(s) in thedocker-compose.yml file.

For example, to increase the maximum JVM Heap Size for Logstash:

logstash:environment:LS_JAVA_OPTS:-Xmx1g -Xms1g

As for the Java Heap memory (see above), you can specify JVM options to enable JMX and map the JMX port on the Dockerhost.

Update the{ES,LS}_JAVA_OPTS environment variable with the following content (I've mapped the JMX service on the port18080, you can change that). Do not forget to update the-Djava.rmi.server.hostname option with the IP address of yourDocker host (replaceDOCKER_HOST_IP):

logstash:environment:LS_JAVA_OPTS:-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=18080 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.rmi.port=18080 -Djava.rmi.server.hostname=DOCKER_HOST_IP -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.local.only=false

To use a different Elastic Stack version than the one currently available in the repository, simply change the versionnumber inside the.env file, and rebuild the stack with:

$docker-compose build$docker-compose up

ℹ️ Always pay attention to theupgrade instructions for each individual component beforeperforming a stack upgrade.

See the following Wiki pages:

• External applications
• Popular integrations

Experimental support for DockerSwarm mode is provided in the form of adocker-stack.yml file, which canbe deployed in an existing Swarm cluster using the following command:

$docker stack deploy -c docker-stack.yml elk

If all components get deployed without any error, the following command will show 3 running services:

$docker stack services elk

ℹ️ To scale Elasticsearch in Swarm mode, configurezen to use the DNS nametasks.elasticsearchinstead ofelasticsearch.