Kafka

Collect and ship Kafka application logs to Logstash and Elasticsearch.

Filebeat is a lightweight shipper that enables you to send your Apache Kafka application logs to Logstash and Elasticsearch. Configure Filebeat using the pre-defined examples below to start sending and analysing your Apache Kafka application logs.

Step 1 - Install Filebeat

deb (Debian/Ubuntu/Mint)

curl -L -O https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/beats/filebeat/filebeat-oss-7.8.1-amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i filebeat-oss-7.8.1-amd64.deb

rpm (CentOS/RHEL/Fedora)

curl -L -O https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/beats/filebeat/filebeat-oss-7.8.1-x86_64.rpm
sudo rpm -vi filebeat-oss-7.8.1-x86_64.rpm

macOS

curl -L -O https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/beats/filebeat/filebeat-oss-7.8.1-darwin-x86_64.tar.gz
tar xzvf filebeat-oss-7.8.1-darwin-x86_64.tar.gz

Windows

Download the filebeat Windows zip file from the official downloads page.
Extract the contents of the zip file into C:\Program Files.
Rename the filebeat-<version>-windows directory to filebeat.
Open a PowerShell prompt as an Administrator (right-click the PowerShell icon and select Run As Administrator). If you are running Windows XP, you may need to download and install PowerShell.
Run the following commands to install filebeat as a Windows service:

cd 'C:\Program Files\filebeat'
.\install-service-filebeat.ps1

If script execution is disabled on your system, you need to set the execution policy for the current session to allow the script to run. For example: PowerShell.exe -ExecutionPolicy UnRestricted -File .\install-service-filebeat.ps1.

My OS isn't here! Don't see your system? Check out the official downloads page for more options (including 32-bit versions).

Step 2 - Enable module

There are several built in filebeat modules you can use. To enable the Kafka module, run the following:

deb/rpm

filebeat modules list
filebeat modules enable kafka

Windows

PS > .\filebeat.exe modules enable kafka

Step 3 - Locate configuration file

deb/rpm /etc/filebeat/filebeat.yml
win <EXTRACTED_ARCHIVE>/filebeat.yml

Step 4 - Configure Output

We'll be shipping to Logstash so that we have the option to run filters before the data is indexed.
Comment out the elasticsearch output block.

## Comment out elasticsearch output
#output.elasticsearch:
#  hosts: ["localhost:9200"]

Uncomment and change the logstash output to match below.

output.logstash:
    hosts: ["your-logstash-host:your-ssl-port"]
    loadbalance: true
    ssl.enabled: true

Step 5 - Validate configuration

Let's check the configuration file is syntactically correct by running filebeat directly inside the terminal. If the file is invalid, filebeat will print an error loading config file error message with details on how to correct the problem.

deb/rpm

sudo filebeat -e -c /etc/filebeat/filebeat.yml

macOS

cd <EXTRACTED_ARCHIVE>
./filebeat -e -c filebeat.yml

Windows

cd <EXTRACTED_ARCHIVE>
.\filebeat.exe -e -c filebeat.yml

Step 6 - (Optional) Update Logstash Filters

All Logit stacks come pre-configured with popular Logstash filters. We would recommend that you add Kafka specific filters if you don't already have them, to ensure enhanced dashboards and modules work correctly.

Edit your Logstash filters by choosing Stack > Settings > Logstash Filters

filter {
  if [fileset][module] == "kafka" {
  grok {
     match => { "message" => "(?m)%{TIMESTAMP_ISO8601:[kafka][log][timestamp]}] %{LOGLEVEL:[kafka][log][level]} +%{JAVALOGMESSAGE:[kafka][log][message]} \(%{JAVACLASS:[kafka][log][class]}\)$[ \n]*(?'[kafka][log][trace][full]')" }
  }
  grok {
     match => { "[kafka][log][message]" => "\[%{KAFKA_COMPONENT:[kafka][log][component]}\] +%{JAVALOGMESSAGE:[kafka][log][message]}" }
     pattern_definitions => { "KAFKA_COMPONENT" => "[^\]]*" }
  }
  if "_grokparsefailure" in [tags] {
     mutate { add_field => { "[kafka][log][component]" => "unknown" } }
  }
  grok {
     match => { "[kafka][log][trace][full]" => "%{JAVACLASS:[kafka][log][trace][class]}:\s*%{JAVALOGMESSAGE:[kafka][log][trace][message]}" }
  }
  mutate { rename => { "@timestamp" => "read_timestamp" }
  }
  date { match => [ "[kafka][log][timestamp]", "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss,SSS" ]
    target => "@timestamp"
    }
  } 
}

Step 7 - Start filebeat

Ok, time to start ingesting data!

deb/rpm

sudo systemctl enable filebeat
sudo systemctl start filebeat

Windows

Start-Service filebeat

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