What is Kibana?
Kibana is an open source analytics and visualization platform designed to work with Elasticsearch. You use Kibana to search, view, and interact with data stored in Elasticsearch indices. You can easily perform advanced data analysis and visualize your data in a variety of charts, tables, and maps.
Kibana makes it easy to understand large volumes of data. It’s simple, the browser-based interface enables you to quickly create and share dynamic dashboards that display changes to Elasticsearch queries in real time.
Setting up Kibana is a snap. You can install Kibana and start exploring your Elasticsearch indices in minutes — no code, no additional infrastructure required.
The definition is referenced from here.
Prerequisites
- Node js (Because Kibana runs on Node js)
- Kibana
Download Node js
Link to download Node.js here.
Download Kibana
Link to download Kibana, click here.
![Kibana]()
After downloading the tool, we first thing need to install Node.js.
Installing Node js
After installing node.js, just check if it is running. Open windows command prompt and type “node” command in it.
If the installation has succeeded, you are now in the command line mode of node.js.
Configure Kibana
Below is the view of unzipped Kibana.
Now, we are going to run Kibana through command prompt.
To run Kibana, go to to bin folder and type command “cmd” in search header.
After entering the command, it will open path in command prompt.
Next, enter “Kibana” and enter a command to run Kibana and press enter.
Note
Please check your Elastic Search instance should be running; after that only run Kibana server.
The Kibana server is running now. Just copy URL: - http://localhost:5601
Open this URL in the browser.
If you get the same screen, then your Kibana server is running successfully.
Next, click on Discover tab to “Create index pattern”.
Discover tab
What is “Create index pattern”.?
Kibana uses index patterns to retrieve data from Elasticsearch indices for things like visualizations.
After view appears it will ask for Index pattern here name Index which we have created in the previous tutorial.
Index Name: - timesheet.
As you will type index name it will tell you “Success! Your index pattern matches # index”.
After entering “Index patterns” next click on Next Step button.
It will show you a message that “Index pattern does not contain any time field” that’s true because we do not have any time field in timesheet index.
Click on Create Index pattern button to Create Index pattern.
After creating an index, it will show you timesheet index with all fields in it as shown below.
This is the same index which we have created in tutorial 1.
Now after configuring index if you go to “Discover” tab again then it will display all data of timesheet index from elastic search.
Visualize tab
You can create your own Visualize data (index and type).
Click on create a visualization button after clicking you will see various charts as shown below.
Choose any chart to create your visualization.
I have chosen pie chart, you can customize according to your requirements.
![Kibana]()
Similarly you can create your dashboard and timelion.
Note
You can also save your visualization via the button.
Dashboard tab
In this part, you can add your created visualization to the dashboard. But one thing you need to do when you create visualization is to save it, to save your visualization there is a save button at the right top on the page just click it to save, then you can use saved visualization on the dashboard.
![Kibana]()
Timelion tab
What is timelion?
Timelion is a time series data visualizer that enables you to combine totally independent data sources within a single visualization. It’s driven by a simple expression language you use to retrieve time series data, perform calculations to tease out the answers to complex questions, and visualize the results.
For example, Timelion enables you to easily get the answers to questions like,
- How many pages does each unique user view over time?
- What’s the difference in traffic volume between this Friday and last Friday?
- What percent of Japan’s population came to my site today?
- What’s the 10-day moving average of the S&P 500?
- What’s the cumulative sum of all search requests received in the last 2 years?
Referenced from the site check here.
![Kibana]()
Next, we are going have a look at Dev Tools.
Dev Tools tab
This is a kind of rest client which is built in into Kibana for Searching data by querying it.
Management tab
The Management application is where you perform your runtime configuration of Kibana, including both the initial setup and ongoing configuration of index patterns, advanced settings that tweak the behaviors of Kibana itself, and the various "objects" that you can save throughout Kibana such as searches, visualizations, and dashboards.
This section is plugin-able, so in addition to the out of the box capabilities, packs such as X-Pack can add additional management capabilities to Kibana.
Reference link - https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/kibana/current/management.html
Finally, in this article, we got to learn what Kibana is and how it works and for what purpose we should use it.