Elastic Stack

The Elastic Stack is a powerful suite of tools designed for search, analytics, and monitoring use cases. At its core is Elasticsearch, a distributed search and analytics engine. Combined with Kibana, the Elastic Stack provides an intuitive interface for visualizing data and insights.

Tools to Get Started

• Elasticsearch Stack
  • Elasticsearch
  • Kibana

What is Elasticsearch?

Elasticsearch is a fast, scalable, and flexible engine for search and analytics. It can handle a wide range of use cases such as:

• Log Monitoring
• Infrastructure Monitoring
• Application Performance Monitoring (APM)
• Enterprise Search
• Maps
• Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Elasticsearch is distributed, RESTful, and centralizes your data for lightning-fast search and analytics, scaling effortlessly as your needs grow.

Installing Elasticsearch

Follow these steps to install or upgrade Elasticsearch using Helm:

1. Fetch Default Configuration

Download the file elastic.values.yml (attached to this article). It contains the configuration values to start ElasticSearch. It is already filled with the values recommended by Collab.
 Open a CommandLine or PowerShell in the folder containing elastic.values.yml.

2. Add the Elasticsearch Helm Repository

helm repo add elastic https://helm.elastic.co

helm repo update elastic

3. Install or Upgrade Elasticsearch

helm upgrade --install elastic elastic/elasticsearch --version 7.16.2 --create-namespace -n elastic -f elastic.values.yml

4. Verify Elasticsearch Deployment

Check if Elasticsearch is running:

kubectl -n elastic get pod  

Expected Output:

NAME                             READY   STATUS    RESTARTS         AGE

elastic-master-0                 1/1     Running   0                5h30m

elastic-master-1                 1/1     Running   0                5h32m

elastic-master-2                 1/1     Running   0                5h30m

Installing Kibana

Kibana provides a UI for interacting with Elasticsearch, making it easy to visualize data and monitor systems.

Install:  kibana elastic/kibana --version 7.16.2 -n elastic -f kibana.values.yml`

1. Fetch Default Configuration 

Download the file kibana.values.yml (attached to this article). It contains the  configuration values to start Kibana. It is already filled with the values recommended by Collab.
 Open a CommandLine or PowerShel in the folder containing kibana.values.yml. 

2. Install Kibana

 kibana elastic/kibana --version 7.16.2 -n elastic -f kibana.values.yml`

3. Verify Kibana Deployment

Once deployed, check if Kibana is running:

kubectl -n elastic get pod

Expected Output:

NAME                             READY   STATUS    RESTARTS         AGE

elastic-master-0                 1/1     Running   0                5h30m

elastic-master-1                 1/1     Running   0                5h32m

elastic-master-2                 1/1     Running   0                5h30m

kibana-kibana-596ddc6494-2qbcj   1/1     Running   0                145d

Accessing Credentials

Elasticsearch automatically creates credentials stored in a Kubernetes secret.

1. Get the Default Username

The username is always elastic.

2. Retrieve the Password

Run the following command to get the password from the secret:

 `kubectl -n elastic get secret elastic-master-credentials -o go-template='{{.data.password | base64decode}}'`

Use these credentials to log into Kibana.