Installing the Elastic Stack

When installing the Elastic Stack, you must use the same version across the entire stack. For example, if you are using Elasticsearch 6.4.3, you install Beats 6.4.3, Elasticsearch Hadoop 6.4.3, Kibana 6.4.3, and Logstash 6.4.3.

If you’re upgrading an existing installation, see Upgrading the Elastic Stack for information about how to ensure compatibility with 6.4.3.

Install the Elastic Stack products you want to use in the following order:

Installing in this order ensures that the components each product depends on are in place.

Elastic Cloud is the official hosted Elasticsearch and Kibana offering from Elastic. Installing on Elastic Cloud is easy: a single click creates an Elasticsearch cluster configured to the size you want, with or without high availability. X-Pack is always installed, so you automatically have the ability to secure and monitor your cluster. Kibana can be enabled on a cluster with a click, and a number of popular plugins are readily available.

Some Elastic Cloud features can be used only with a specific subscription level. For example, installing custom plugins, dictionaries, and scripts requires a Gold or Platinum subscription.

To learn more, see {cloud-ref}/getting-started.html[Getting Started with Elastic Cloud]. Or just sign up for a free trial and start exploring hosted Elasticsearch in minutes.