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Getting Started with Kibana
editGetting Started with Kibana
editNow that you have Kibana installed, you can step through this tutorial to get fast hands-on experience with key Kibana functionality. By the end of this tutorial, you will have:
- Loaded a sample data set into your Elasticsearch installation
- Defined at least one index pattern
- Use the Discover functionality to explore your data
- Set up some visualizations to graphically represent your data
- Assembled visualizations into a Dashboard
The material in this section assumes you have a working Kibana install connected to a working Elasticsearch install.
Video tutorials are also available:
Before You Start: Loading Sample Data
editThe tutorials in this section rely on the following data sets:
- The complete works of William Shakespeare, suitably parsed into fields. Download this data set by clicking here: shakespeare.json.
- A set of fictitious accounts with randomly generated data. Download this data set by clicking here: accounts.zip
- A set of randomly generated log files. Download this data set by clicking here: logs.jsonl.gz
Two of the data sets are compressed. Use the following commands to extract the files:
unzip accounts.zip gunzip logs.jsonl.gz
The Shakespeare data set is organized in the following schema:
{ "line_id": INT, "play_name": "String", "speech_number": INT, "line_number": "String", "speaker": "String", "text_entry": "String", }
The accounts data set is organized in the following schema:
{ "account_number": INT, "balance": INT, "firstname": "String", "lastname": "String", "age": INT, "gender": "M or F", "address": "String", "employer": "String", "email": "String", "city": "String", "state": "String" }
The schema for the logs data set has dozens of different fields, but the notable ones used in this tutorial are:
{ "memory": INT, "geo.coordinates": "geo_point" "@timestamp": "date" }
Before we load the Shakespeare data set, we need to set up a mapping for the fields. Mapping divides the documents in the index into logical groups and specifies a field’s characteristics, such as the field’s searchability or whether or not it’s tokenized, or broken up into separate words.
Use the following command to set up a mapping for the Shakespeare data set:
curl -XPUT http://localhost:9200/shakespeare -d ' { "mappings" : { "_default_" : { "properties" : { "speaker" : {"type": "string", "index" : "not_analyzed" }, "play_name" : {"type": "string", "index" : "not_analyzed" }, "line_id" : { "type" : "integer" }, "speech_number" : { "type" : "integer" } } } } } ';
This mapping specifies the following qualities for the data set:
- The speaker field is a string that isn’t analyzed. The string in this field is treated as a single unit, even if there are multiple words in the field.
- The same applies to the play_name field.
- The line_id and speech_number fields are integers.
The logs data set requires a mapping to label the latitude/longitude pairs in the logs as geographic locations by
applying the geo_point
type to those fields.
Use the following commands to establish geo_point
mapping for the logs:
curl -XPUT http://localhost:9200/logstash-2015.05.18 -d ' { "mappings": { "log": { "properties": { "geo": { "properties": { "coordinates": { "type": "geo_point" } } } } } } } ';
curl -XPUT http://localhost:9200/logstash-2015.05.19 -d ' { "mappings": { "log": { "properties": { "geo": { "properties": { "coordinates": { "type": "geo_point" } } } } } } } ';
curl -XPUT http://localhost:9200/logstash-2015.05.20 -d ' { "mappings": { "log": { "properties": { "geo": { "properties": { "coordinates": { "type": "geo_point" } } } } } } } ';
The accounts data set doesn’t require any mappings, so at this point we’re ready to use the Elasticsearch
bulk
API to load the data sets with the following commands:
curl -XPOST 'localhost:9200/bank/account/_bulk?pretty' --data-binary @accounts.json curl -XPOST 'localhost:9200/shakespeare/_bulk?pretty' --data-binary @shakespeare.json curl -XPOST 'localhost:9200/_bulk?pretty' --data-binary @logs.jsonl
These commands may take some time to execute, depending on the computing resources available.
Verify successful loading with the following command:
curl 'localhost:9200/_cat/indices?v'
You should see output similar to the following:
health status index pri rep docs.count docs.deleted store.size pri.store.size yellow open bank 5 1 1000 0 418.2kb 418.2kb yellow open shakespeare 5 1 111396 0 17.6mb 17.6mb yellow open logstash-2015.05.18 5 1 4631 0 15.6mb 15.6mb yellow open logstash-2015.05.19 5 1 4624 0 15.7mb 15.7mb yellow open logstash-2015.05.20 5 1 4750 0 16.4mb 16.4mb