The Logstash Book

Updated for Logstash 2.3.2!

A book designed for SysAdmins, Operations staff, Developers and DevOps who are interested in deploying a log management solution using the open source Elasticsearch Logstash & Kibana or ELK stack.

In this book we will walk you through installing, deploying, managing and extending Logstash. We’re going to do that by introducing you to Example.com, where you’re going to start a new job as one of its SysAdmins. The first project you’ll be in charge of is developing its new log management solution.

We’ll teach you how to

• Install and deploy Logstash.
• Ship events from a Logstash Shipper to a central Logstash server.
• Filter incoming events using a variety of techniques.
• Output those events to a selection of useful destinations.
• Use Logstash’s awesome web interface Kibana.
• Scale out your Logstash implementation as your environment grows.
• Quickly and easily extend Logstash to deliver additional functionality you might need.

By the end of the book you should have a functional and effective log management solution that you can deploy into your own environment.

Updated for Logstash 2.3.2!

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction or Why Should I Bother?
Chapter 2. Getting Started with Logstash
Chapter 3. Shipping Events
Chapter 4. Shipping Events without the Logstash agent
Chapter 5. Filtering Events with Logstash
Chapter 6. Outputting Events from Logstash
Chapter 7. Scaling Logstash
Chapter 8. Extending Logstash