Elasticsearch. Logstash. Kibana.

Creating an ELK stack could not be easier.

Important:

• The master branch (image: willdurand/elk:latest or willdurand/elk:kibana-4.1.2) currently contains an image with Kibana 4.1.2, Elasticsearch 1.x, and Logstash 1.x;
• Branch kibana-4.4.2 (image: willdurand/elk:kibana-4.4.2) provides Kibana 4.4.2, Elasticsearch 2.2, and Logstash 2.2;
• Branch kibana-4.5.4 (image: willdurand/elk:kibana-4.5.4) provides Kibana 4.5.4, Elasticsearch 2.3, and Logstash 2.3.

Quick Start

$ docker run -p 8080:80 \
    -v /path/to/your/logstash/config:/etc/logstash \
    willdurand/elk

Then, browse: http://localhost:8080 (replace localhost with your public IP address).

Your logstash configuration directory MUST contain at least one logstash configuration file. If several files are found in the configuration directory, logstash will use all of them, concatenated in lexicographical order, as the configuration.

Compose Configuration

elk:
    image: willdurand/elk
    ports:
        - "8080:80"
    volumes:
        - /path/to/your/logstash/config:/etc/logstash

Data

Elasticsearch data are located in the /data folder. It is probably a good idea to mount a volume in order to preserve data integrity. You can create a data only container:

$ docker run -d -v /data --name dataelk busybox

Then, use it:

$ docker run -p 8080:80 \
    -v /path/to/your/logstash/config:/etc/logstash \
    --volumes-from dataelk \
    willdurand/elk

If you want to rely on the logstash agent for processing files, you have to mount volumes as well, but you should rather only send logs to this container.

Compose Configuration

elk:
    image: willdurand/elk
    ports:
        - "8080:80"
    volumes:
        - /path/to/your/logstash/config:/etc/logstash
    volumes_from:
        - dataelk

dataelk:
    image: busybox
    volumes:
        - /data

Real Life Use Case

You can use this image to run an ELK stack that receives logs from your production servers, using Logstash Forwarder:

elk:
    image: willdurand/elk
    ports:
        - "80:80"
        - "XX.XX.XX.XX:5043:5043"
    volumes:
        - /path/to/your/ssl/files:/etc/ssl
        - /path/to/your/logstash/config:/etc/logstash
    volumes_from:
        - dataelk

dataelk:
    image: busybox
    volumes:
        - /data

Note that the 5043 port is binded to a private IP address in this case, which is recommended. Kibana is publicly available though.

Your logstash configuration SHOULD contain the following input definition:

input {
  lumberjack {
    port => 5043
    ssl_certificate => "/etc/ssl/logstash-forwarder.crt"
    ssl_key => "/etc/ssl/logstash-forwarder.key"
  }
}

Extend It

One of the Docker best practices is to avoid mapping a host folder to a container volume. Instead of specifying a volume, it is recommended to use this image as base image and configure your own image.