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The LogStash Book
A new book designed for SysAdmins, Operations staff, Developers and DevOps who are interested in deploying a log management solution using the open source tool LogStash.
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 Web interface and alternative interfaces like 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.
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 Web interface and alternative interfaces like 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.
141 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 31, 2013
45 people are currently reading
131 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
October 28, 2014
Very Good Book for "DevOps", "Systems Administrators" & "Operations Staff". Helps with almost hand-holding on how to deploy the complete "Log Management" infrastructure using Logstash, ElasticSearch, Redis.
Very good read for technical and business mindset people. If you have good amount of logs (rather text files) and if you can enrich the logs with meta-data then you can actually build very useful applications on the top of ElasticSearch Search Engine.
I recommend this book to every DevOps Resource.
Very good read for technical and business mindset people. If you have good amount of logs (rather text files) and if you can enrich the logs with meta-data then you can actually build very useful applications on the top of ElasticSearch Search Engine.
I recommend this book to every DevOps Resource.
June 5, 2013
Recommended... but I expected more detailed explanations about integrations with all the plugins availables for logstash
October 12, 2019
Look big data without programming!
Logstash is a great tool. This book really helps to understand it and get real value from Logstash.
Logstash can be used in many ways. I use it as:
1. A webhook that ingests usage data from mobile apps and servers. As destinations I use Redis, JSON files and Elasticsearch server. With Logstash you get queues for free!
2. A command line tool I use it to rebuild an Elasticsearch environment.
Logstash is a great tool. This book really helps to understand it and get real value from Logstash.
Logstash can be used in many ways. I use it as:
1. A webhook that ingests usage data from mobile apps and servers. As destinations I use Redis, JSON files and Elasticsearch server. With Logstash you get queues for free!
2. A command line tool I use it to rebuild an Elasticsearch environment.
May 15, 2017
Good extended tutorial on how to get started with logstash.
October 19, 2017
Easy to follow
February 1, 2020
Good Book!
September 30, 2014
Nice overview of setting up and configuring ELK
Other than some minor hiccups which needed me to take some quick advice on freenode, this was a really nice intro to the logstash framework.
If you are trying out the setup the author mentions in the book, remember you really need either separate instances or separate hosts for each of the logstash components - the shipper and indexer. if you have only a single host to try this on, you can setup redis and elasticsearch on it just the way mentioned. But put only one of the configs - shipper or central in /etc/logstash.d and use the standard logstash startup script. Put the other config elsewhere and run that config directly using the logstash executable.
Putting both shipper and central/indexer in logstash.d and using the standard startup script is nontrivial to setup, and needs tagging and conditional to make it work.
Other than some minor hiccups which needed me to take some quick advice on freenode, this was a really nice intro to the logstash framework.
If you are trying out the setup the author mentions in the book, remember you really need either separate instances or separate hosts for each of the logstash components - the shipper and indexer. if you have only a single host to try this on, you can setup redis and elasticsearch on it just the way mentioned. But put only one of the configs - shipper or central in /etc/logstash.d and use the standard logstash startup script. Put the other config elsewhere and run that config directly using the logstash executable.
Putting both shipper and central/indexer in logstash.d and using the standard startup script is nontrivial to setup, and needs tagging and conditional to make it work.
December 22, 2015
Everything I already did know about logstash was in this book, everything I wanted to know was not. All information I gathered so far could be found anywhere on the internet. Unfortunately more advanced topics are not covered.
Also, the author provides different solutions for a given problem, but does not elaborate on what the pros and cons are of these given solutions. How do they scale, what are the performance characteristics what are potential bottlenecks?
What I to know, for example, was how to manage and organise multiple indexes and how to perform proper housekeeping on them.
A recurring sentence found in the book was "We're not going to show you ... because that's beyond the scope of this book ..."
And I think the `man` page on plugins is more extensive than the chapter in the book.
Also, the author provides different solutions for a given problem, but does not elaborate on what the pros and cons are of these given solutions. How do they scale, what are the performance characteristics what are potential bottlenecks?
What I to know, for example, was how to manage and organise multiple indexes and how to perform proper housekeeping on them.
A recurring sentence found in the book was "We're not going to show you ... because that's beyond the scope of this book ..."
And I think the `man` page on plugins is more extensive than the chapter in the book.
December 9, 2015
A very good introduction to using LogStash.
LogStash is a wonderful open source tool to parse logs. It has lots of features of recognizing various log files available out of the the box. One can define one's own structure too. One can add on additional information to he information available in the files.
It provides agents to bring the logs generated in multiple servers to a central location and parse it in this central location. This is a very useful feature especially for data centers where a large number of servers need to be monitored and maintained.
It uses Elastic Search for the storage and Kibana for creating graphs and tabular data. The ELK stack has become very popular in the technical world.
LogStash is a wonderful open source tool to parse logs. It has lots of features of recognizing various log files available out of the the box. One can define one's own structure too. One can add on additional information to he information available in the files.
It provides agents to bring the logs generated in multiple servers to a central location and parse it in this central location. This is a very useful feature especially for data centers where a large number of servers need to be monitored and maintained.
It uses Elastic Search for the storage and Kibana for creating graphs and tabular data. The ELK stack has become very popular in the technical world.
February 10, 2014
Purely awesome LogStash starter - it will help you to understand the tool and it's capabilities without falling into too-narrow details. Covers all typical scenarios (at least the ones I was thinking about), including day-to-day integration patterns.
The content itself is concise, well-formatted and neatly detailed with proper (and readable) examples.
This is exactly what I've expected for the money I've paid - very good book about a very interesting tool.
The content itself is concise, well-formatted and neatly detailed with proper (and readable) examples.
This is exactly what I've expected for the money I've paid - very good book about a very interesting tool.
January 29, 2015
Good introduction
This book provides really good introduction to very wide and complicated subject of logs management and metrics monitoring. There's not a lot of books around dedicated to this topic, so it makes this one even more valuable.
It doesn't include advanced material, unfortunately. I would be happy to have some systematic reading about logs reliability and resilience, best integration practices and so on. Hopefully next edition will cover it in more details.
This book provides really good introduction to very wide and complicated subject of logs management and metrics monitoring. There's not a lot of books around dedicated to this topic, so it makes this one even more valuable.
It doesn't include advanced material, unfortunately. I would be happy to have some systematic reading about logs reliability and resilience, best integration practices and so on. Hopefully next edition will cover it in more details.
October 9, 2015
Not really happy with the book. It does not really differentiate that much with what is available online, and one would expect the book at least to provide for a solution on how to load old log files in batch. It does not.
The good thing: I've purchased the PDF version of the book directly from the author. This means that it gets updated with every major version
The good thing: I've purchased the PDF version of the book directly from the author. This means that it gets updated with every major version
October 4, 2016
A good introduction to the ELK stack (particularly Logstash and Elasticsearch). It has decent coverage of Logstash configuration and some scaling considerations for Logstash and Elasticsearch, but didn't go too far in depth into any topics. It made a light read for me; finished in two sittings.
If you're new to the topic this is worth a read, otherwise it would be too basic.
If you're new to the topic this is worth a read, otherwise it would be too basic.
March 3, 2015
good introduction
Very good basis for introducing logstash, elasticsearch, grok filters and scaling. Recommended for anyone starting their first setup or looking to scale/extend an existing installation.
Very good basis for introducing logstash, elasticsearch, grok filters and scaling. Recommended for anyone starting their first setup or looking to scale/extend an existing installation.
April 20, 2015
Well worth a read. I definitely have a better handle on LogStash now. I would have liked to have seen just a little more depth in the scaling section but am otherwise quite satisfied.
May 31, 2015
too shallow, imho. Would be nice to extend it with more examples.
October 24, 2016
Great into to the elk stack.
Well written and covers all you beed ti get started with elk. Was very easy to read. Kudos to James Turnbull.
Well written and covers all you beed ti get started with elk. Was very easy to read. Kudos to James Turnbull.
November 23, 2016
Excellent book to get you started and provide the first few steps to scale things and go big.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews