Installing the Elastic Stack

This guide is intended for users seeking to install all or part of the Elastic Stack as part of clean or fresh installation. If you are upgrading, then please refer to Upgrading the Elastic Stack.

Beginning with 5.0, installing the Elastic Stack and understanding the compatibility between products has been dramatically simplified. All products are now part of a unified release process, so when any product is released, then all products are released with it. This helps to guarantee compatibility as well as avoid confusion surrounding version numbers.

As a result, when performing any Elastic Stack installation, you should always start with the same version across the entire stack. For example, if you select Elasticsearch 5.1.2, then you should also select Kibana 5.1.2, Logstash 5.1.2, and Beats 5.1.2.

We recommend that you install the Elastic Stack in the following order.

This helps to ensure that the right parts of your infrastructure are running before other parts attempt to use them (e.g., Logstash sending data to Elasticsearch).

The table below lists the installation instructions, per component:

Elastic Cloud is the official hosted Elasticsearch and Kibana offering from Elastic and it’s designed to be easy. A single click creates an Elasticsearch cluster configured to the size you want, with or without high availability. X-Pack is always installed and provides features such as security and monitoring. Kibana can be enabled on a cluster with a click, and a number of commonly requested plugins are readily available.

Some Elastic Cloud features can be used only with a specific subscription level. For example, you can install custom plugins, dictionaries, and scripts only if you are a Gold or Platinum customer.

To learn more about Elastic Cloud, see our getting started documentation. Or sign up for a free trial and start exploring hosted Elasticsearch within minutes.