Overview
Filebeat is a lightweight, open source shipper for log file data. As the next-generation Logstash Forwarder, Filebeat tails logs and quickly sends this information to Logstash for further parsing and enrichment or to Elasticsearch for centralized storage and analysis.
Usage
Filebeat can be added to any principal charm thanks to the wonders of being a subordinate charm. The following example will deploy an ubuntu log source along with the elk stack so we can visualize our log data.
juju deploy ~elasticsearch-charmers/bundle/elk-stack
juju deploy xenial/filebeat
juju deploy xenial/ubuntu
juju add-relation filebeat:beats-host ubuntu
juju add-relation filebeat logstash
Deploying the minimal Beats formation
If you do not need log buffering and alternate transforms on data that is being shipped to ElasticSearch, you can simply deploy the 'beats-core' bundle which stands up Elasticsearch, Kibana, and the known working Beats subordinate applications.
juju deploy ~containers/bundle/beats-core
juju deploy xenial/ubuntu
juju add-relation filebeat:beats-host ubuntu
juju add-relation topbeat:beats-host ubuntu
Changing what is shipped
By default, the Filebeat charm will ship any container logs present in
/var/lib/docker/containers as well as everything in:
/var/log/*/*.log
/var/log/*.log
If you'd rather target specific log files:
juju config filebeat logpath=/var/log/mylog.log
Testing the deployment
The applications provide extended status reporting to indicate when they are ready:
juju status
This is particularly useful when combined with watch to track the on-going progress of the deployment:
watch juju status
The message for each unit will provide information about that unit's state. Once they all indicate that they are ready, you can navigate to the kibana url and view the streamed log data from the Ubuntu host.
juju status kibana --format=yaml | grep public-address
Navigate to http://<kibana-ip>/ in a browser and begin creating your dashboard visualizations.
Upgrading filebeat
Upgrades are handled at both the charm and apt repository levels. Use
upgrade-charm to get the latest charm code on all filebeat units:
juju upgrade-charm filebeat
Apt repositories are scanned any time the install_sources config changes. If
a new version of filebeat is found in the configured repository, juju status
will instruct operators to run the reinstall action. This action must be
run on each filebeat unit:
juju run-action --wait filebeat/0 reinstall
The reinstall action will stop the filebeat service, purge the apt package,
and reinstall the latest version available from the configured repository.
Scale Out Usage
As a subordinate charm, filebeat will scale when additional principal units are
added. For example, adding ubuntu units that are related to filebeat will
automatically install and configure filebeat for the new unit(s).
juju add-unit ubuntu
To monitor additional applications, simply relate the filebeat subordinate:
juju add-relation filebeat:beats-host my-charm