Running analytics on application events and logs using Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana

In this post, we will learn how to use Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana for running analytics on application events and logs. Firstly, I will install all these applications on my local machine.

Installations

You can read my previous posts on how to install Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana and Filebeat on your local machine.

Basic configuration

I hope by now you are have installed Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana and Filebeat on your system. Now, Let's do few basic configurations required to be able to run analytics on application events and logs.

Elasticsearch

Open elasticsearch.yml file in [ELASTICSEARCH_INSTLLATION_DIR]/config folder and add below properties to it.

cluster.name: gauravbytes-event-analyzer
node.name: node-1

Cluster name is used by Elasticsearch node to form a cluster. Node name within cluster need to be unique. We are running only single instance of Elasticsearch on our local machine. But, in production grade setup there will be master nodes, data nodes and client nodes that you will be configuring as per your requirements.

Logstash

Open logstash.yml file in [LOGSTASH_INSTALLATION_DIR]/config folder and add below properties to it.

node.name: gauravbytes-logstash
path.data: [MOUNTED_HDD_LOCATION]
config.reload.automatic: true
config.reload.interval: 30s

Creating logstash pipeline for parsing application events and logs

There are three parts in pipeline. i.e. input, filter and output. Below the pipeline conf for parsing application event and logs.

input {
    beats {
        port => "5044"
    }
}

filter {
   
    grok {
        match => {"message" => "\[%{TIMESTAMP_ISO8601:loggerTime}\] *%{LOGLEVEL:level} *%{DATA:loggerName} *- (?(.|\r|\n)*)"}
    }
 
    if ([fields][type] == "appevents") {
        json {
            source => "event"
            target => "appEvent"
        }
  
        mutate { 
            remove_field => "event"
        }

        date {
            match => [ "[appEvent][eventTime]" , "ISO8601" ]
            target => "@timestamp"
        }
  
        mutate {
            replace => { "[type]" => "app-events" }
        }
    }
    else if ([fields][type] == "businesslogs") {  
        mutate {
            replace => { "[type]" => "app-logs" }
        }
    }
 
    mutate { 
        remove_field => "message"
    }
}
output {
    elasticsearch {
        hosts => ["http://localhost:9200"]
        index => "%{type}-%{+YYYY.MM.dd}"
    }
}

In the input section, we are listening on port 5044 for beat (filebeat to send data on this port).

In the output section, we are persisting data in Elasticsearch on an index based on type and date combination.

Let's discuss the filter section in detail.

• 1) We are using grok filter plugin to parse plain lines of text to structured data.

grok {
    match => {"message" => "\[%{TIMESTAMP_ISO8601:loggerTime}\] *%{LOGLEVEL:level} *%{DATA:loggerName} *- (?(.|\r|\n)*)"}
}

• 2) We are using json filter plugin to the convert event field to a json object and storing it in appEvent field.

json {
    source => "event"
    target => "appEvent"
}

• 3) We are using mutate filter plugin to the remove data we don't require.

mutate { 
    remove_field => "event"
}

mutate { 
    remove_field => "message"
}

• 4) We are using date filter plugin to the parse the eventTime from appEvent field to ISO8601dateformat and then replacing its value with @timestamp field..

date {
    match => [ "[appEvent][eventTime]" , "ISO8601" ]
    target => "@timestamp"
}

Filebeat

Open the file filebeat.yml in [FILEBEAT_INSTALLATION_DIR] and below configurations.

filebeat.prospectors:
- type: log
  enabled: true
  paths:
    - E:\gauravbytes-log-analyzer\logs\AppEvents.log
  fields:
    type: appevents
  
- type: log
  enabled: true
  paths:
    - E:\gauravbytes-log-analyzer\logs\GauravBytesLogs.log
  fields:
    type: businesslogs
  multiline.pattern: ^\[
  multiline.negate: true
  multiline.match: after

filebeat.config.modules:
  path: ${path.config}/modules.d/*.yml
  reload.enabled: false
setup.template.settings:
  index.number_of_shards: 3

output.logstash:
  hosts: ["localhost:5044"]

In the configurations above, we are defining two different type of filebeat prospectors; one for application events and the other for application logs. We have also defined that the output should be sent to logstash. There are many other configurations that you can do by referencing filebeat.reference.yml file in the filebeat installation directory.

Kibana

Open the kibana.yml in [KIBANA_INSTALLATION_DIR]/config folder and add below configuration to it.

elasticsearch.url: "http://localhost:9200"

We have only configured Elasticsearch url but you can change Kibana host, port, name and other ssl related configurations.

Running ELK stack and Filebeat

//running elasticsearch on windows
\bin\elasticsearch.exe

// running logstash
bin\logstash.bat -f config\gauravbytes-config.conf --config.reload.automatic

//running kibana
bin\kibana.bat

//running filebeat
filebeat.exe -e -c filebeat-test.yml -d "publish"

Creating Application Event and Log structure

I have created two classes AppEvent.java and AppLog.java which will capture information related to application events and logs. Below is the structure for both the classes.

//AppEvent.java
public class AppEvent implements BaseEvent {
    public enum AppEventType {
        LOGIN_SUCCESS, LOGIN_FAILURE, DATA_READ, DATA_WRITE, ERROR;
    }

    private String identifier;
    private String hostAddress;
    private String requestIP;
    private ZonedDateTime eventTime;
    private AppEventType eventType;
    private String apiName;
    private String message;
    private Throwable throwable;
}

//AppLog.java
public class AppLog implements BaseEvent {
    private String apiName;
    private String message;
    private Throwable throwable;
}

Let's generate events and logs

I have created a sample application to generate dummy events and logs. You can check out the full project on github. There is a AppEventGenerator java file. Run this class with system argument -DLOG_PATH=[YOUR_LOG_DIR] to generate dummy events. If your log_path is not same as one defined in the filebeat-test.yml, then copy the log files generated by this project to the location defined in the filebeat-test.yml. You soon see the events and logs got persisted in the Elasticsearch.

Running analytics on application events and logs in Kibana dashboard

You can read the original post to read on how to view data and running analytics.