Run the latest version of the Elastic stack with Docker and Docker Compose.
It gives you the ability to analyze any data set by using the searching/aggregation capabilities of Elasticsearch and the visualization power of Kibana.
Based on the official Docker images from Elastic:
Other available stack variants:
default: default setup without TLS encryptionsearchguard: Search Guard support
Important
Platinum features are enabled by default for a trial duration of 30 days. After this evaluation period, you will retain access to all the free features included in the Open Basic license seamlessly, without manual intervention required, and without losing any data. Refer to the How to disable paid features section to opt out of this behaviour.
docker compose up tlsdocker compose up setupdocker compose up
We aim at providing the simplest possible entry into the Elastic stack for anybody who feels like experimenting with this powerful combo of technologies. This project's default configuration is purposely minimal and unopinionated. It does not rely on any external dependency, and uses as little custom automation as necessary to get things up and running.
Instead, we believe in good documentation so that you can use this repository as a template, tweak it, and make it your own. sherifabdlnaby/elastdocker is one example among others of project that builds upon this idea.
- Docker Engine version 18.06.0 or newer
- Docker Compose version 2.0.0 or newer
- 1.5 GB of RAM
Note
Especially on Linux, make sure your user has the required permissions to interact with the Docker daemon.
By default, the stack exposes the following ports:
- 5044: Logstash Beats input
- 50000: Logstash TCP input
- 9600: Logstash monitoring API
- 9200: Elasticsearch HTTP
- 9300: Elasticsearch TCP transport
- 5601: Kibana
Warning
Elasticsearch's bootstrap checks were purposely disabled to facilitate the setup of the Elastic stack in development environments. For production setups, we recommend users to set up their host according to the instructions from the Elasticsearch documentation: Important System Configuration.
If you are using the legacy Hyper-V mode of Docker Desktop for Windows, ensure File Sharing is
enabled for the C: drive.
The default configuration of Docker Desktop for Mac allows mounting files from /Users/, /Volume/, /private/,
/tmp and /var/folders exclusively. Make sure the repository is cloned in one of those locations or follow the
instructions from the documentation to add more locations.
Warning
You must rebuild the stack images with docker compose build whenever you switch branch or update the
version of an already existing stack.
Clone this repository onto the Docker host that will run the stack with the command below:
git clone --branch tls https://github.com/deviantony/docker-elk.gitThen, generate X.509 certificates and private keys to enable secure communications over TLS between components:
docker compose up tlsNote
All Elastic components — including extensions — are pre-configured to use the certificates generated by this command. To change the DNS names and IP addresses to include in the certificates, or re-generate them at a later time, refer to How to re-generate TLS certificates.
After TLS certificates have been generated, initialize the Elasticsearch users and groups required by docker-elk by executing the command:
docker compose up setupIf everything went well and the setup completed without error, start the other stack components:
docker compose upNote
You can also run all services in the background (detached mode) by appending the -d flag to the above command.
Give Kibana about a minute to initialize, then access the Kibana web UI by opening http://localhost:5601 in a web browser and use the following (default) credentials to log in:
- user: elastic
- password: changeme
Note
Upon the initial startup, the elastic, logstash_internal and kibana_system Elasticsearch users are intialized
with the values of the passwords defined in the .env file ("changeme" by default). The first one is the
built-in superuser, the other two are used by Kibana and Logstash respectively to communicate with
Elasticsearch. This task is only performed during the initial startup of the stack. To change users' passwords
after they have been initialized, please refer to the instructions in the next section.
Note
Refer to Security settings in Elasticsearch to disable authentication.
Warning
Starting with Elastic v8.0.0, it is no longer possible to run Kibana using the bootstraped privileged elastic user.
The "changeme" password set by default for all aforementioned users is unsecure. For increased security, we will reset the passwords of all aforementioned Elasticsearch users to random secrets.
-
Reset passwords for default users
The commands below reset the passwords of the
elastic,logstash_internalandkibana_systemusers. Take note of them.docker compose exec elasticsearch bin/elasticsearch-reset-password --batch --user elastic --url https://localhost:9200docker compose exec elasticsearch bin/elasticsearch-reset-password --batch --user logstash_internal --url https://localhost:9200docker compose exec elasticsearch bin/elasticsearch-reset-password --batch --user kibana_system --url https://localhost:9200If the need for it arises (e.g. if you want to collect monitoring information through Beats and other components), feel free to repeat this operation at any time for the rest of the built-in users.
-
Replace usernames and passwords in configuration files
Replace the password of the
elasticuser inside the.envfile with the password generated in the previous step. Its value isn't used by any core component, but extensions use it to connect to Elasticsearch.[!NOTE] In case you don't plan on using any of the provided extensions, or prefer to create your own roles and users to authenticate these services, it is safe to remove the
ELASTIC_PASSWORDentry from the.envfile altogether after the stack has been initialized.Replace the password of the
logstash_internaluser inside the.envfile with the password generated in the previous step. Its value is referenced inside the Logstash pipeline file (logstash/pipeline/logstash.conf).Replace the password of the
kibana_systemuser inside the.envfile with the password generated in the previous step. Its value is referenced inside the Kibana configuration file (kibana/config/kibana.yml).See the Configuration section below for more information about these configuration files.
-
Restart Logstash and Kibana to re-connect to Elasticsearch using the new passwords
docker compose up -d logstash kibana
Note
Learn more about the security of the Elastic stack at Secure the Elastic Stack.
Launch the Kibana web UI by opening http://localhost:5601 in a web browser, and use the following credentials to log in:
- user: elastic
- password: <your generated elastic password>
Now that the stack is fully configured, you can go ahead and inject some log entries.
The shipped Logstash configuration allows you to send data over the TCP port 50000. For example, you can use one of the
following commands — depending on your installed version of nc (Netcat) — to ingest the content of the log file
/path/to/logfile.log in Elasticsearch, via Logstash:
# Execute `nc -h` to determine your `nc` version
cat /path/to/logfile.log | nc -q0 localhost 50000 # BSD
cat /path/to/logfile.log | nc -c localhost 50000 # GNU
cat /path/to/logfile.log | nc --send-only localhost 50000 # nmapYou can also load the sample data provided by your Kibana installation.
Elasticsearch data is persisted inside a volume by default.
In order to entirely shutdown the stack and remove all persisted data, use the following Docker Compose command:
docker compose down -vThis repository stays aligned with the latest version of the Elastic stack. The main branch tracks the current major
version (8.x).
To use a different version of the core Elastic components, simply change the version number inside the .env
file. If you are upgrading an existing stack, remember to rebuild all container images using the docker compose build
command.
Important
Always pay attention to the official upgrade instructions for each individual component before performing a stack upgrade.
Older major versions are also supported on separate branches:
release-7.x: 7.x seriesrelease-6.x: 6.x series (End-of-life)release-5.x: 5.x series (End-of-life)
Important
Configuration is not dynamically reloaded, you will need to restart individual components after any configuration change.
The Elasticsearch configuration is stored in elasticsearch/config/elasticsearch.yml.
You can also specify the options you want to override by setting environment variables inside the Compose file:
elasticsearch:
environment:
network.host: _non_loopback_
cluster.name: my-clusterPlease refer to the following documentation page for more details about how to configure Elasticsearch inside Docker containers: Install Elasticsearch with Docker.
The Kibana default configuration is stored in kibana/config/kibana.yml.
You can also specify the options you want to override by setting environment variables inside the Compose file:
kibana:
environment:
SERVER_NAME: kibana.example.orgPlease refer to the following documentation page for more details about how to configure Kibana inside Docker containers: Install Kibana with Docker.
The Logstash configuration is stored in logstash/config/logstash.yml.
You can also specify the options you want to override by setting environment variables inside the Compose file:
logstash:
environment:
LOG_LEVEL: debugPlease refer to the following documentation page for more details about how to configure Logstash inside Docker containers: Configuring Logstash for Docker.
You can cancel an ongoing trial before its expiry date — and thus revert to a basic license — either from the License
Management panel of Kibana, or using Elasticsearch's start_basic Licensing API. Please
note that the second option is the only way to recover access to Kibana if the license isn't either switched to basic
or upgraded before the trial's expiry date.
Changing the license type by switching the value of Elasticsearch's xpack.license.self_generated.type setting from
trial to basic (see License settings) will only work if done prior to the initial setup.
After a trial has been started, the loss of features from trial to basic must be acknowledged using one of the two
methods described in the first paragraph.
Follow the instructions from the Wiki: Scaling out Elasticsearch
To re-generate TLS certificates and private keys, first ensure that the tls/instances.yml file contains a list of certificates with suitable domains and IP addresses for your environment (defaults are suitable for local installations without access from other hosts on the network).
Then, remove existing TLS certificates and private keys using the command below:
$ find tls/certs -name ca -prune -or -type d -mindepth 1 -exec rm -rfv {} +
tls/certs/kibana/kibana.key
tls/certs/kibana/kibana.crt
tls/certs/kibana
tls/certs/apm-server/apm-server.crt
tls/certs/apm-server/apm-server.key
tls/certs/apm-server
tls/certs/fleet-server/fleet-server.key
tls/certs/fleet-server/fleet-server.crt
tls/certs/fleet-server
tls/certs/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.key
tls/certs/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.crt
tls/certs/elasticsearchand run the tls service again.
Alternatively, you can refer to the documentation page Manually configure security from the Elastic documentation to generate certificates and private keys manually.
To run the setup container again and re-initialize all users for which a password was defined inside the .env file,
simply "up" the setup Compose service again:
$ docker compose up setup
⠿ Container docker-elk-elasticsearch-1 Running
⠿ Container docker-elk-setup-1 Created
Attaching to docker-elk-setup-1
...
docker-elk-setup-1 | [+] User 'monitoring_internal'
docker-elk-setup-1 | ⠿ User does not exist, creating
docker-elk-setup-1 | [+] User 'beats_system'
docker-elk-setup-1 | ⠿ User exists, setting password
docker-elk-setup-1 exited with code 0If for any reason your are unable to use Kibana to change the password of your users (including built-in users), you can use the Elasticsearch API instead and achieve the same result.
In the example below, we reset the password of the elastic user (notice "/user/elastic" in the URL):
curl -XPOST -D- 'https://localhost:9200/_security/user/elastic/_password' \
--cacert tls/certs/ca/ca.crt \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-u elastic:<your current elastic password> \
-d '{"password" : "<your new password>"}'To add plugins to any ELK component you have to:
- Add a
RUNstatement to the correspondingDockerfile(eg.RUN logstash-plugin install logstash-filter-json) - Add the associated plugin code configuration to the service configuration (eg. Logstash input/output)
- Rebuild the images using the
docker compose buildcommand
A few extensions are available inside the extensions directory. These extensions provide features which
are not part of the standard Elastic stack, but can be used to enrich it with extra integrations.
The documentation for these extensions is provided inside each individual subdirectory, on a per-extension basis. Some of them require manual changes to the default ELK configuration.
The startup scripts for Elasticsearch and Logstash can append extra JVM options from the value of an environment variable, allowing the user to adjust the amount of memory that can be used by each component:
| Service | Environment variable |
|---|---|
| Elasticsearch | ES_JAVA_OPTS |
| Logstash | LS_JAVA_OPTS |
To accommodate environments where memory is scarce (Docker Desktop for Mac has only 2 GB available by default), the Heap
Size allocation is capped by default in the docker-compose.yml file to 512 MB for Elasticsearch and 256 MB for
Logstash. If you want to override the default JVM configuration, edit the matching environment variable(s) in the
docker-compose.yml file.
For example, to increase the maximum JVM Heap Size for Logstash:
logstash:
environment:
LS_JAVA_OPTS: -Xms1g -Xmx1gWhen these options are not set:
- Elasticsearch starts with a JVM Heap Size that is determined automatically.
- Logstash starts with a fixed JVM Heap Size of 1 GB.
As for the Java Heap memory (see above), you can specify JVM options to enable JMX and map the JMX port on the Docker host.
Update the {ES,LS}_JAVA_OPTS environment variable with the following content (I've mapped the JMX service on the port
18080, you can change that). Do not forget to update the -Djava.rmi.server.hostname option with the IP address of your
Docker host (replace DOCKER_HOST_IP):
logstash:
environment:
LS_JAVA_OPTS: -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=18080 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.rmi.port=18080 -Djava.rmi.server.hostname=DOCKER_HOST_IP -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.local.only=falseSee the following Wiki pages: