Introduction to the open source ELK solution

We mentioned previously that ELK stands for Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana because these three applications or systems are the building blocks of a complete monitoring and reporting solution. Each part has its own purpose and functions it performs – Logstash gathers all the data into a consistent database, Elasticsearch is able to quickly go through all the data that Logstash stored, and Kibana is here to turn search results into something that is both informational and visually appealing. Having said all this, ELK recently changed its name. Although it is still referred to as the ELK Stack, and almost the entirety of the internet will call it that, the ELK stack is now named the Elastic Stack, for the sole reason that, at the time of writing, there is another fourth component included in the stack. This component is called Beats, and it represents a significant addition to the whole system.

But let's start from the...