# Elastic Stack

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## About

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You can use the Elastic Stack without paying since the projects are opensource, but Elastic (company) offers plugins to make easier to setup everything, and these plugins are paid.
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### ELK Stack

#### Elasticsearch

Search engine and analytics.

It can do super fast searches over the data stored _(Document Database, like_ `json`_)_.

It has a `Rest API` to access the data.

It works in a distributed way with shards that have data redundancy, allowing it to be scalable.

#### Logstash

Real time data collector engine.

It is a data processor that runs through pipelines that can receive, transform and send data simultaneously. _(Sends to_ `Elasticsearch`_)_

#### Kibana

Visual and data exploration tool.

Allows users to see the `Elasticsearch` data in various perpectives. _(Dashboard tool)_





## ELK Stack vs Elastic Stack

Elastic Stack now uses `Beats` along side of `Logstash` to collect data.

Since `Logstash` is a lot harder to work with, it is not been used anymore to collect the data.

#### Beats

`Beats` can get logs, metrics, network data, audit data, uptime monitoring, etc, where each `Beat` is responsible for one of them.

Can easily integrate with `Elasticsearch` or `Logstash` and it is much easier to work with, expecially in the Cloud.

You can also create your own `Beat`.



