Exercise 2: Initializing Elasticsearch and Kibana

The purpose of this exercise is to start Elasticsearch and Kibana. You have two options for running them:

1. Download and extract them on your machine.
2. or use Docker.

If you have Docker installed, use the second option. Otherwise, it is easier to go with the first one - also use this in the university computer labs.

Option 1: Start Elasticsearch and Kibana by downloading and extracting them

1. Get Elasticsearch and Kibana.

   • When working at home: download the 7.15.x version of Elasticsearch and Kibana. Please make sure to use version 7.15.x; the starter code and the instructions might be specific to this version. Then extract the archives.

     Extracting the zip files will take some time. Some paths might be long, so it is best to extract these to a directory with a short path.

   • When working in university computer laboratories: locate the folders containing Elasticsearch and Kibana in directory c:\tools. To ensure a clean database, remove the data directory under the folder of Elasticsearch.

2. Start both using the executables bin/elasticsearch(.bat) and bin/kibana(.bat). There is no configuration needed; the default setup will work fine.

3. Wait until they start.

   Startup might take up to a minute, don't be alarmed.

   Elasticsearch will print something like this:

   [INFO ][o.e.h.AbstractHttpServerTransport] [xx] publish_address {127.0.0.1:9200}, bound_addresses {127.0.0.1:9200}, {[::1]:9200}
   [INFO ][o.e.n.Node               ] [xx] started
   

   Note the port where Elasticsearch is available (should be 9200).

   Kibana, when ready, will print:

   [info][server][Kibana][http] http server running at http://localhost:5601

   If you need to change the ports, edit the following files, then restart the applications:

   • config\elasticsearch.yml, look for key http.port, uncomment it, and set a port;
   • config\kibana.yml, look for key elasticsearch.hosts, uncomment it and set the same port.

Option 2: Start Elasticsearch and Kibana using Docker

1. Start Docker Desktop and wait for it to initialize.

2. Only in university computer laboratories: open Docker Desktop settings (right-click on the Docker icon on the taskbar), and follow the teacher's instructions to configure a proxy to be used by Docker.

3. Open a command prompt or PowerShell console and test whether Docker is working: execute docker version, which should print version information for client and server.

4. Locate the provided docker-compose.yml file in the checked-out starter solution (located in the root of your git repository). Open it in a text editor of your choice, and check its contents. Check the following specifics:

   • environment: This is used to set environment variables in the container. We can use these to provide some settings for Elasticsearch and Kibana as well. One example is the cluster.name variable.

   • ulimits: For Elasticsearch to function correctly, we have to set some ulimit values in the container.

   • volumes: Due to how file storage works in Docker containers, every data is lost if we remove a container and start a new one. Of course, this is not exactly appropriate for a database service like Elasticsearch. Therefore we are going to use a volume which provides a more durable storage option.

5. Navigate a command prompt / PowerShell / bash shell into the folder with the docker-compose.yml file, and issue the following commands.

   If you are in the university computer laboratories, please run docker-compose down -v first to remove any lingering containers and data left behind.

   Then to start, use docker-compose up.

   If you are using Linux, and this command fails, you might try to sudo to make things easier.

   Keep this shell open. You will see the application logs here.

6. To shut down the running system, use CTRL + C. Your data will be kept, and restarting with the same command as above will restart the applications.

   To completely shut down the applications and remove all data, use docker-compose down -v.

Check that the systems are running

1. Open a browser of your choice and navigate to http://localhost:9200 to verify that Elasticsearch is up and running. Make sure to check the version and the build_flavor too!

   

2. Open a browser of your choice and navigate to http://localhost:5601. You should see Kibana's starting page. Choose the "Explore on my own" option to get to the landing page.