Deploy your own ELK stack using Docker Compose

Introduction

In this tutorial, you will learn how to install an ELK stack using Docker Compose on a server with Ubuntu (version 22.04). The ELK stack is comprised of Elasticsearch, Kibana, and Logstash.

• Elasticsearch is a search and analytics engine.
• Kibana is a user interface for data analysis.
• Logstash can analyse logs from applications.

Prerequisites

• A server running Ubuntu version 22.04 or later
  • SSH access to that server
  • Access to the root user or a user with sudo permissions
• Basic knowledge of Docker, Docker Compose, ElasticSearch and YAML

Example terminology

• Username: holu
• Hostname: <your_host>

Step 1 - Install Docker Compose

You may skip this step if you have already installed Docker Compose on your server. First, SSH into your server using the following command:

Replace holu with your own username and <your_host> with the IP of your server.

ssh holu@<your_host>

Make sure to update apt packages and install cURL:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install curl -y

After making sure curl is installed, we can use the quick install script provided by Docker to install Docker as well as Docker Compose:

curl https://get.docker.com | sh

This command will download the script from get.docker.com and "pipe" it to sh (It will feed the downloaded script to sh which will execute that script and install Docker). The last thing we can do is add ourselves to the Docker group so that we don’t need to use sudo everytime we use the docker command.

Replace holu with your own username.

sudo usermod -aG docker holu

Make sure to log out and log in again to apply changes.

Step 2 - Create the Docker containers

Step 2.1 - Create docker-compose.yaml

The docker-compose.yaml file will be used to declare all the infrastructure for the ELK stack. It is used to create several containers with a single command.

Often, containers are not stored in the users directory but in /opt/containers.

sudo mkdir -p /opt/containers &&  cd /opt/containers
sudo chown -R holu /opt/containers

Create a new folder on your server and create a docker-compose.yaml file and an esdata directory in it:

mkdir elk-stack && cd elk-stack && touch docker-compose.yaml && mkdir esdata && sudo chown -R 1000:1000 esdata

We will store the elasticsearch data permanently outside the elastissearch container in the esdata directory.

We want to use Docker Compose to create three Docker containers:

Container name	Description
setup	This container will start before the other containers and configure the passwords.
elasticsearch	This will be the container for Elasticsearch.
kibana	You can use Kibana to visualize the data from Elasticsearch with beautiful graphs and dashboards. Take a look:

To create those three containers, add the following content to the docker-compose.yaml file:

version: "3"
services:
  setup:
    image: docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:8.15.1
    environment:
      - ELASTIC_PASSWORD=${ELASTIC_PASSWORD}
      - KIBANA_PASSWORD=${KIBANA_PASSWORD}
    container_name: setup
    command:
      - bash
      - -c
      - |
        echo "Waiting for Elasticsearch availability";
        until curl -s http://elasticsearch:9200 | grep -q "missing authentication credentials"; do sleep 30; done;
        echo "Setting kibana_system password";
        until curl -s -X POST -u "elastic:${ELASTIC_PASSWORD}" -H "Content-Type: application/json" http://elasticsearch:9200/_security/user/kibana_system/_password -d "{\"password\":\"${KIBANA_PASSWORD}\"}" | grep -q "^{}"; do sleep 10; done;
        echo "All done!";

  elasticsearch:
    image: docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:8.15.1
    # give the container a name
    # this will also set the container's hostname as elasticsearch
    container_name: elasticsearch
    # this will store the data permanently outside the elastissearch container
    volumes:
      - ./esdata:/usr/share/elasticsearch/data
    # this will allow access to the content from outside the container
    ports:
      - 9200:9200
    environment:
      - discovery.type=single-node
      - cluster.name=elasticsearch
      - bootstrap.memory_lock=true
      # limits elasticsearch to 1 GB of RAM
      - ES_JAVA_OPTS=-Xms1g -Xmx1g
      # The password for the 'elastic' user
      - ELASTIC_PASSWORD=${ELASTIC_PASSWORD}
      - xpack.security.http.ssl.enabled=false

  kibana:
    image: docker.elastic.co/kibana/kibana:8.15.1
    container_name: kibana
    ports:
      - 5601:5601
    environment:
      # remember the container_name for elasticsearch?
      # we use it here to access that container
      - ELASTICSEARCH_HOSTS=http://elasticsearch:9200
      - ELASTICSEARCH_USERNAME=kibana_system
      - ELASTICSEARCH_PASSWORD=${KIBANA_PASSWORD}
      # Change this to true if you want to sent
      # telemetry data to kibana developers
      - TELEMETRY_ENABLED=false

# this defines the volume to permanently store the elasticsearch container data.
volumes:
   esdata:

We are currently missing an element though, the .env file. The .env file is used to store secrets like passwords and API tokens to remove them from your configuration or code. Docker Compose automatically recognizes the .env file and replaces variables like ${MY_VARIABLE} with the variable from .env.

Create .env and add the following lines:

ELASTIC_PASSWORD=<your-elastic-password>
KIBANA_PASSWORD=<your-kibana-password>

Step 2.2 - Keep your installation secure before starting the containers

The ports above (9200 and 5601) will be open to the universe.

If the fulltextsearch ports are open, you'll get an email (see "CERT-Bund Reports")

To secure the docker envirenment, implement this suggestion to bind ports only to the local machine.

Edit the ports in docker-compose.yaml:

  elasticsearch:
    ports:
    - 127.0.0.1:9200:9200

  kibana:
    ports:
    - 127.0.0.1:5601:5601

You should have ufw installed and make sure that especially the ports 9200 and 5601 are blocked:

To         Action      From
--         ------      ----
22         ALLOW       Anywhere                      
80         ALLOW       Anywhere                  
443        ALLOW       Anywhere                      
9200       DENY        Anywhere                     
5601       DENY        Anywhere    

To access these services from outside, you need to setup a reverse proxy using Nginx, or similar.

Click here to view an example with Nginx

sudo apt install nginx -y
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/kibana

Add this content:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name kibana.example.com;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:5601; # Kibana port
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    }
}

Start Nginx:

sudo rm -rf /etc/nginx/sites-available/default /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/kibana /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl restart nginx
sudo systemctl enable nginx

Step 2.3 - Start the containers

You can now run docker compose to start everything up:

docker compose up -d

Output:

[+] Running 3/4
 ⠇ Network elk-stack_default  Created
 :heavy_check_mark: Container kibana           Started
 :heavy_check_mark: Container setup            Started
 :heavy_check_mark: Container elasticsearch    Started

You can use the docker ps command to check if everything works as expected.

holu@<your_host>:~/elk-stack$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID   IMAGE                                                  COMMAND       CREATED              STATUS              PORTS                                       NAMES
<id>           docker.elastic.co/kibana/kibana:8.15.1                 "<command>"   About a minute ago   Up About a minute   0.0.0.0:5601->5601/tcp, :::5601->5601/tcp   kibana
<id>           docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:8.15.1   "<command>"   About a minute ago   Up About a minute   9200/tcp, 9300/tcp                          elasticsearch

You can now open Kibana in a web browser by entering <your_server>:5601 in the URL bar (or https://kibana.example.com if you have followed the security suggestions).

• Login with the username elastic and the password you set earlier in the .env file.

• If you have this screen when logging in, click on "Explore on my own".

• You should now be able to access the Kibana homepage. It looks like this:

Step 3 - Logstash

Now it’s time to add the final piece of the puzzle, Logstash. Logstash can analyse logs from your application(s) and it feeds the analysed logs to elasticsearch.

Edit docker-compose.yaml and add a fourth container in the "services" section below "kibana".

  logstash:
    image: docker.elastic.co/logstash/logstash:8.15.1
    container_name: logstash
    command:
      - /bin/bash
      - -c
      - |
        cp /usr/share/logstash/pipeline/logstash.yml /usr/share/logstash/config/logstash.yml
        echo "Waiting for Elasticsearch availability";
        until curl -s http://elasticsearch:9200 | grep -q "missing authentication credentials"; do sleep 1; done;
        echo "Starting logstash";
        /usr/share/logstash/bin/logstash -f /usr/share/logstash/pipeline/logstash.conf
     ports:
      - 5044:5044
      # Secure option would be:
      # - 127.0.0.1:5044:5044
    environment:
      - xpack.monitoring.enabled=false
      - ELASTIC_USER=elastic
      - ELASTIC_PASSWORD=${ELASTIC_PASSWORD}
      - ELASTIC_HOSTS=http://elasticsearch:9200
    volumes:
      - ./logstash.conf:/usr/share/logstash/pipeline/logstash.conf

Setting up Logstash is a bit more complicated. You need one additional configuration file, logstash.conf. Logstash works on something called a "pipeline". It’s a file explaining what Logstash should do (where do logs come from, how to analyse the logs, where to send them). The pipeline will be in the file logstash.conf.

This is one of the most basic pipelines you could have:

input {
    file {
        path => "/var/log/dpkg.log"
        start_position => "beginning"
    }
}

filter { }

output {
    elasticsearch {
    hosts => "${ELASTIC_HOSTS}"
    user => "elastic"
    password => "${ELASTIC_PASSWORD}"
    index => "logstash-%{+YYYY.MM.dd}"
    }
    stdout { }
}

It’s pretty self explanatory. It takes a file as input (in this case /var/log/dpkg.log) and outputs to Elasticsearch and stdout.

Put the example above in your logstash.conf file.

The elk-stack directory should now contain the following files and directories:

elk-stack/
├── .env
├── docker-compose.yaml
├── esdata/
└── logstash.conf

You can now start Logstash using the following command:

docker compose up -d

Output:

[+] Running 4/4
 :heavy_check_mark: Container logstash       Started
 :heavy_check_mark: Container setup          Started
 :heavy_check_mark: Container elasticsearch  Running
 :heavy_check_mark: Container kibana         Running

You can now access Logstash from Kibana. You will need to create a logstash data view first.

• Go on the discover page of "Analytics". You should see something like this:

• Create your data view by clicking on the "Create data view" button:

• After you saved the data view, you should be able to see logs coming from Logstash:

Step 4 - Destroy the stack

Lastly, to stop the stack and remove the containers, run the following command:

docker compose down

Output:

[+] Running 5/5
 :heavy_check_mark: Container logstash         Removed
 :heavy_check_mark: Container elasticsearch    Removed
 :heavy_check_mark: Container kibana           Removed
 :heavy_check_mark: Container setup            Removed
 :heavy_check_mark: Network elk-stack_default  Removed

Conclusion

That’s it! You should have a working ELK stack running with Docker Compose. Next steps would be to add log exporters such as Filebeat, or check out the official documentation.

License: MIT