Filebeat

Many folks will consider Beats part of the ELK stack because of the heavy dependence the three primary ELK components used to have on it. However, with the continued improvement of the Elastic agent and outside vendors developing compatibility within their independent products to send data to Elasticsearch, the inclusion of Beats is becoming less and less of an automatic assumption. We will explore the Elastic agent also. However, Beats remains simple and lightweight. Therefore, it is a very natural progression for us to transition into.

Aside from sample datasets, which are groups of fake data that have been set up to test systems such as the ELK stack before deployment, the next simplest manner of data acquisition is through a family of agents, known as data shippers, collectively referred to as Beats. Beats is not a singular agent or software application. Rather, it is a family of applications. By separating the data collection into independent agents, each with an area...