ELKStack

ELK Stack, also known as Elastic Stack, is a suite of three open-source tools—Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana—developed by Elastic. It provides a scalable platform for collecting, storing, indexing, searching, and visualizing large volumes of log and event data in real time.

Elasticsearch is a distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine built on Apache Lucene. It stores data in JSON documents, supports complex queries and aggregations, and enables fast, scalable retrieval across large datasets.

Logstash is a data processing pipeline that ingests data from multiple sources, applies transformations, and forwards it to a destination such as Elasticsearch. It supports a wide range of input, filter, and output plugins to shape data.

Kibana is a web-based visualization layer that connects to Elasticsearch to create dashboards, charts, and interactive searches. It enables users to explore data, monitor trends, and share insights.

Beats are lightweight data shippers that send logs and metrics directly to Elasticsearch or Logstash, helping to simplify data collection. The Elastic Stack is commonly used for centralized logging, observability, security analytics, and real-time search.

Deployment considerations include cluster sizing, data retention policies, security controls, and monitoring to maintain performance and reliability.