Best Method to Monitor Your ELK Stack Using Telegraf and MetricFire

Otherwise, you can configure a different telegraf output to forward metrics to another data source.

Configure the Elasticsearch Input Plugin

Telegraf has many input plugins that can collect a wide range of data from many popular technologies and 3rd party sources. In this example, we'll demonstrate how to configure the Elasticsearch plugin.

All you need to do is search for the inputs. Elasticsearch section in your Telegraf.conf file, and uncomment the [[inputs.elasticsearch]] line:

[[inputs.elasticsearch]]

Then you can uncomment the 'servers' line, the default URL is:

  servers = ["http://localhost:9200"]

Next, uncomment/modify the following sections in the Elasticsearch plugin config (some can optionally be set to false, to limit the number of metrics forwarded):

  http_timeout = "5s"
  local = true
  cluster_health = true
  cluster_stats = true
  cluster_stats_only_from_master = true
  indices_include = ["_all"]
  indices_level = "shards"

Save your changes, and then start Telegraf using the following command, to see if there are any configuration errors in the output:

telegraf --config telegraf.conf

Telegraf will now be forwarding Elasticsearch metrics to your data source. See our Elasticsearch blog article for additional details or the official GitHub repository for more information and configuration options for the Elasticsearch input plugin.

Configure the Logstash Input Plugin

Telegraf has many input plugins that can collect a wide range of data from many popular technologies and 3rd party sources. In this example, we'll demonstrate how to configure the Logstash plugin.

Within your telegraf.conf file, locate and uncomment the [[inputs.logstash]] line:

[[inputs.logstash]]

Then you can uncomment the 'URL' line, the default path is:

  url = "http://127.0.0.1:9600"

Save your changes, and then start Telegraf using the following command, to see if there are any configuration errors in the output:

telegraf --config telegraf.conf

Telegraf will now be forwarding Logstash metrics to your data source. See our Logstash blog article for additional details or the official GitHub repository for more information and configuration options for this input plugin.

Configure the Kibana Input Plugin

Telegraf has many input plugins that can collect a wide range of data from many popular technologies and 3rd party sources. In this example, we'll demonstrate how to configure the Kibana plugin.

Just open your Telegraf.conf file, and uncomment the [[inputs.kibana]] line:

[[inputs.kibana]]

Then you can uncomment the 'servers' and 'timeout' lines, the defaults are:

 servers = ["http://localhost:5601"]
 timeout = "5s"

Save your changes, and then start Telegraf using the following command, to see if there are any configuration errors in the output:

telegraf --config telegraf.conf

Telegraf will now be forwarding Kibana metrics to your data source. See our Kibana blog article for additional details or the official GitHub repository for more information and configuration options for the Elasticsearch input plugin.

Use Hosted Graphite by MetricFire to Create Custom Dashboards and Alerts

MetricFire is a monitoring platform that enables you to gather, visualize, analyze, and alert on metrics from sources such as servers, databases, networks, devices, and applications. By utilizing MetricFire, you can effortlessly identify problems and optimize resources from within your infrastructure. Hosted Graphite by MetricFire takes away the burden of self-hosting your own monitoring solution, allowing you more time and freedom to work on your most important tasks.

1. Once you have signed up for a Hosted Graphite account and used the above steps to configure your server with the Telegraf Agent, metrics will be forwarded, timestamped, ingested, and aggregated into the Hosted Graphite backend.
2. They will be sent and stored in the Graphite format of metric.name.path <numeric-value> <unix-timestamp>, which provides a tree-like data structure and makes them easy to query.
3. Now that all of your ELK performance metrics are in 1 place, you can locate them in your Hosted Graphite account and use them to build custom Dashboard Alerts.

Create Dashboards in Hosted Graphite's Hosted Grafana

In the Hosted Graphite UI, navigate to Dashboards => Primary Dashboards and select the + button to build new panels:

Then you can go into Edit mode, and use the query UI to select a graphite metric path:

NOTE: the default data source will be the Hosted Graphite backend if you are accessing Grafana through your HG account. 

Here's an example of how you might visualize your Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana metrics on the same dashboard:

See the Hosted Graphite dashboard docs for more details on creating dashboards and adding more advanced features like Graphite Functions, Dashboard Variables and Annotations.

Creating Graphite Alerts

In the Hosted Graphite UI, navigate to Alerts => Graphite Alerts to create a new alert. Name the alert, add one of your graphite metrics to the alerting metric field, and add a description of what this alert is:

Then select the Criteria tab which will set the threshold, and select a notification channel:

NOTE: the default notification channel is the email you used to sign up for the Hosted Graphite account, but you can easily configure a channel for Slack, PagerDuty, Microsoft Teams, and more. See the Hosted Graphite docs for more details on notification channels.

Conclusion

Monitoring the performance of your ELK stack is vital for ensuring that critical logging, monitoring, and data analysis functions operate efficiently and without interruption, directly impacting your business's ability to make informed decisions and maintain high operational standards. It also helps in optimizing resource usage, preemptively identifying issues, and safeguarding against data loss or security breaches, thereby supporting overall business continuity and performance.

Using tools like dashboards and alerts complements this monitoring by providing real-time visualization, proactive identification of issues, historical trend analysis, and facilitating informed decision-making, all of which are essential for maintaining a robust and efficient infrastructure.

Sign up for a free trial, and start monitoring your ELK infrastructure today! You can also book a demo and talk to the MetricFire team directly about your monitoring needs.