At Evolvere Technologies, we're keen to help organisations modernise their IT infrastructure to make way for more efficient operations.
One of the products we use to do this is Elastic, an open-source group of tools including Elastic Enterprise Search, Elastic Observability, Elastic Security, Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana. We use the ELK Stack most often, which is made up of Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana. Because Elastic's tools are open source, we can develop solutions for our clients that work well with the various products.
The ELK Stack began with Elasticsearch, an open-source, distributed JSON-based search engine. Elasticsearch was then joined by Logstash, the ingest pipeline, and Kibana, the visualisation tool. The ELK Stack was then joined by Beats, the single-purpose data shippers which send data to Logstash and Elasticsearch. The ELK Stack allows DevOps and SecOps teams to collect, aggregate, analyse, and visualise log data in the cloud. This supports a range of critical operational functions such as application monitoring and security analytics.
Elasticsearch
ELK Stack vs Splunk
Both the ELK Stack and Splunk were created to tackle the same problem, but their approach differs. ELK typically takes more time to set up initially, but value extraction is more manageable after this process. On the other hand, Splunk takes data and allows users to search through information to extract precisely what they require.
Why do we prefer the ELK Stack?
It's open-source.
All ELK software is free and open-source, meaning there are no costly license fees. The ELK Stack has a low financial barrier to entry, meaning it is an ideal Stack for smaller businesses.
It's in real-time.
With Kibana, the ELK Stack's visualisation tool, users can create data visualisations and build custom dashboards using real-time data gathered straight from Elasticsearch.
Logging is centralised.
Arguably one of the ELK Stack's best features is its centralisation, meaning multiple users can aggregate logs from often complex cloud environments to a single searchable index.
How do we help our clients with Elastic?
We help our clients install and correctly configure Elastic and manage the data for them, as organisations cannot keep all data forever. We can add data to Elastic in various ways: by copying logs, by running agents on managed devices that send data (called Beats, the data shippers). However, if neither of these methods are suitable, we have written a custom framework named Evobeat, which allows custom code to collect data efficiently.
Evobeat Port Capacity Dashboard
New features in the pipeline
At Evolvere Technologies, we're always searching for new ways to make our clients' lives easier. The new feature, which is currently in development, allows users to see exactly how an application is running. For example, if there is a delay, the feature will effectively tell you what is going on behind the scenes. Is it waiting for a database, an API request, or is the delay in the main code? We'll announce more details shortly.
If you're looking to move from one data platform to the ELK Stack, Evolvere Technologies can help you achieve that goal. If you'd like to learn more about our services, please contact us today. We'd be happy to discuss your requirements in more detail.