Beats is a collection of lightweight data shippers or agents developed by Elastic. These agents are designed to gather various types of operational data, such as logs, metrics, and network traffic, from different sources and send it to either Elasticsearch or Logstash for further processing and analysis. Beats are part of the Elastic Stack (formerly known as the ELK Stack), which also includes Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana.
Here are the key components of the Beats ecosystem:
Filebeat: Filebeat is used for lightweight log file shipping. It's capable of tailing log files and forwarding them to Elasticsearch or Logstash. Filebeat simplifies the process of collecting log data from servers, containers, and other sources.
Metricbeat: Metricbeat is used for collecting system and service metrics from various sources such as operating systems, services, and cloud providers. It provides pre-built modules for collecting metrics from popular services like Apache, MySQL, Redis, and many others.
Packetbeat: Packetbeat is used for network packet analysis in real-time. It captures network traffic between hosts and extracts metadata about network connections, including application-level protocols, HTTP requests, database queries, and DNS transactions.
Winlogbeat: Winlogbeat is specifically designed for collecting Windows event logs. It gathers event log data from Windows servers and workstations and ships it to Elasticsearch or Logstash for analysis. Winlogbeat simplifies the process of monitoring and analyzing Windows event logs.
Heartbeat: Heartbeat is used for monitoring uptime and availability of services and websites. It periodically sends requests to specified endpoints and measures response times and availability. Heartbeat helps in detecting downtime and performance issues in distributed systems.
Auditbeat: Auditbeat is used for collecting Linux audit framework data. It monitors system-level activities and audit events, including file system changes, process creation, user authentication, and more. Auditbeat provides visibility into security-related events and compliance monitoring.
Beats are lightweight, resource-efficient, and easy to deploy, making them suitable for collecting data from diverse environments, including cloud infrastructure, containers, virtual machines, and on-premises servers. By using Beats, organizations can gain valuable insights from their operational data, troubleshoot issues, monitor performance, and ensure the reliability and security of their systems and applications.