- Lab
- Security
Ingest and Parse Logs with Elastic Stack
In this lab, you’ll gain hands-on experience using Elastic Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana) to ingest, parse, troubleshoot syslog and local application log messages, and structure your log data for easier analysis. When you’re finished, you’ll have configured your environment with the apps and tools necessary to ingest logs from different sources, and will have made them readable by visualizing them according to your requirements.
Path Info
Table of Contents
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Challenge
Getting Started in the Lab Environment
Here are the initial instructions and explanation of the lab environment. Read this while your environment is busy creating itself from nothing. Yes, this violates physics; we know. How fun!
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Challenge
Ingest Log Data into ELK
To start, you will verify that your Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana services have been installed and started. You will enable Kibana’s built-in features for monitoring the health of your Elastic Stack. Then you will configure your Logstash instance to ingest syslog messages, and then send them on (output) to your Elasticsearch node. Finally, you will use the command line interface (CLI) to generate syslog messages.
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Challenge
Logstash Filters and Kibana Visualization
In this challenge, you'll create an index pattern in Kibana to access your syslog data stored in Elasticsearch, and create a Discover dashboard in Kibana to visualize your log messages. Then, you'll create a second pipeline to ingest local Linux log data. You'll use Logstash filters like Grok and Date to better visualize your data in Kibana.
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Challenge
Test the Pipeline Configuration to Ensure Correct Log Ingestion
To finish off, you'll use the Linux command line to check your Logstash configuration to ensure that inputs, filters, and outputs are correctly defined, access your Logstash logs for errors or warnings related to the pipeline configuration or data processing, check if indices matching yours are created in Elasticsearch, and check for potential port conflicts.
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Challenge
The Last Challenge
Welcome to the final challenge! This is your last chance to experiment in the environment. Clicking Finish Lab will end this little world that flittered into existence just for you.
What's a lab?
Hands-on Labs are real environments created by industry experts to help you learn. These environments help you gain knowledge and experience, practice without compromising your system, test without risk, destroy without fear, and let you learn from your mistakes. Hands-on Labs: practice your skills before delivering in the real world.
Provided environment for hands-on practice
We will provide the credentials and environment necessary for you to practice right within your browser.
Guided walkthrough
Follow along with the author’s guided walkthrough and build something new in your provided environment!
Did you know?
On average, you retain 75% more of your learning if you get time for practice.