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Elastic Docs ›Filebeat Reference [6.4] ›Modules

Modules overview

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Modules overview

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Filebeat modules simplify the collection, parsing, and visualization of common log formats.

A typical module (say, for the Nginx logs) is composed of one or more filesets (in the case of Nginx, access and error). A fileset contains the following:

  • Filebeat input configurations, which contain the default paths where to look or the log files. These default paths depend on the operating system. The Filebeat configuration is also responsible with stitching together multiline events when needed.
  • Elasticsearch Ingest Node pipeline definition, which is used to parse the log lines.
  • Fields definitions, which are used to configure Elasticsearch with the correct types for each field. They also contain short descriptions for each of the fields.
  • Sample Kibana dashboards, when available, that can be used to visualize the log files.

Filebeat automatically adjusts these configurations based on your environment and loads them to the respective Elastic stack components.

At the moment, Filebeat modules require using the Elasticsearch Ingest Node. In the future, Filebeat modules will be able to also configure Logstash as a more powerful alternative to Ingest Node. For now, if you want to use Logstash, you can follow the steps described in the section called Working with Filebeat Modules in the Logstash Reference.

Filebeat modules require Elasticsearch 5.2 or later.

Get started

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To learn how to configure and run Filebeat modules:

« Modules Apache2 module »