Quick links
- Overview
- Security with X-Pack Elasticsearch
- Alerting and Monitoring with X-Pack Elasticsearch
- Reporting and Graph with X-Pack Elasticsearch
- Implementing X-Pack Elasticsearch
Overview
X-Pack is an Elastic Stack extension that bundles security, alerting, monitoring, reporting, and graph capabilities into one easy-to-install package. While the X-Pack components are designed to work together seamlessly, you can easily enable or disable the features you want to use. If you want to learn about Elasticsearch X-Pack basic security is off and how to resolve it, check out this guide.
Security with X-Pack Elasticsearch
X-Pack security features give you a secure and compliant way to protect your data in Elasticsearch. It provides a range of functionalities including authentication, authorization, IP filtering, and auditing.
For instance, you can use role-based access control (RBAC) to secure access to your Elasticsearch data and APIs. Here’s how you can create a role and assign it to a user:
1. Open the Kibana interface and navigate to Management > Security > Roles.
2. Click on ‘Create role’ and specify the role name.
3. In the ‘Cluster privileges’ section, add the necessary privileges.
4. In the ‘Index privileges’ section, specify the indices that this role can access and the operations it can perform.
5. Save the role and navigate to Management > Security > Users.
6. Create a new user or select an existing one, and assign the newly created role to this user.
Since Elasticsearch 8.0, X-Pack security features are enabled by default when bootstrapping a new cluster. In earlier versions, X-Pack security was disabled by default and had to be enabled explicitly by setting `xpack.security.enabled: true` in the `elasticsearch.yml` configuration file.
Alerting and Monitoring with X-Pack Elasticsearch
X-Pack provides robust alerting and monitoring features. You can create alerts based on changes in your data and monitor your Elasticsearch cluster’s health and performance in real time.
Alerting in X-Pack is based on conditions. When a condition is met, an alert is triggered. For example, you can set an alert for when the CPU usage of your Elasticsearch cluster exceeds a certain threshold.
Monitoring with X-Pack provides a real-time overview of your Elasticsearch cluster. It collects data about your nodes, indices, and shards and displays them in a user-friendly Kibana interface.
Reporting and Graph with X-Pack Elasticsearch
X-Pack also includes reporting and graph exploration features. The reporting feature allows you to generate and download reports based on your Elasticsearch data. You can create reports in various formats such as CSV, PDF, and PNG.
The graph exploration feature, on the other hand, allows you to visually explore and analyze your data. It uses Elasticsearch’s relevance capabilities and can reveal significant relationships in your data.
Implementing X-Pack Elasticsearch
Implementing X-Pack in your Elasticsearch environment involves the following steps:
1. Open Kibana and navigate to Stack Management > Stack > License Management.
2. Click on ‘Start trial’ to start your free 30-day trial of X-Pack.
Remember, while X-Pack offers a host of advanced features, it’s important to evaluate your specific needs and enable only those features that you require. This will help you optimize the performance of your Elasticsearch cluster and ensure that you’re making the most of your X-Pack implementation. Once the trial period is over, you will need to acquire a Platinum license if you want to keep using one or more X-Pack features.
