NGINX Logstash Configuration

Ship logs from NGINX to Logstash

Configure Filebeat to ship logs from a NGINX web server to Logstash and Elasticsearch.

Install Integration

Please click on the Install Integration button to configure your stack for this source.

Install Filebeat

To get started you will need to install filebeat. To do this you have two main options:

Choose the filebeat (opens in a new tab) ZIP file (Windows ZIP x86_64) or
Choose the Microsoft Software Installer MSI (opens in a new tab) file (Windows MSI x86_64 (beta))

To successfully install filebeat and set up the required Windows service you will need to have administrator access.

If you have chosen to download the zip file:

Extract the contents of the zip file into C:\Program Files.
Rename the extracted folder to filebeat
Open a PowerShell prompt as an Administrator (right-click the PowerShell icon and select Run As Administrator).
From the PowerShell prompt, 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

For more information about Powershell execution policies see here (opens in a new tab).

If you have chosen to download the filebeat.msi file:

double-click on it and the relevant files will be downloaded.

At the end of the installation process you'll be given the option to open the folder where filebeat has been installed.

Open a PowerShell prompt as an Administrator (right-click the PowerShell icon and select Run As Administrator).
From the PowerShell prompt, change directory to the location where filebeat was installed and run the following command to install filebeat as a Windows service:

.\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

For more information about Powershell execution policies see here (opens in a new tab).

Enable the NGINX module

There are several built in filebeat modules you can use. You will need to enable the nginx module:

.\filebeat.exe modules list
.\filebeat.exe modules enable nginx

In the module config under modules.d, change the module settings to match your environment. You must enable at least one fileset in the module.

Filesets are disabled by default.

Copy the snippet below and replace the contents of the nginx.yml module file:

# Module: nginx
# Docs: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/beats/filebeat/8.12/filebeat-module-nginx.html
 
- module: nginx
  # Access logs
  access:
    enabled: true
 
    # Set custom paths for the log files. If left empty,
    # Filebeat will choose the paths depending on your OS.
    #var.paths:
 
  # Error logs
  error:
    enabled: true
 
    # Set custom paths for the log files. If left empty,
    # Filebeat will choose the paths depending on your OS.
    #var.paths:
 
  # Ingress-nginx controller logs. This is disabled by default. It could be used in Kubernetes environments to parse ingress-nginx logs
  ingress_controller:
    enabled: true
 
    # Set custom paths for the log files. If left empty,
    # Filebeat will choose the paths depending on your OS.
    #var.paths:

Update your configuration file

The configuration file below is pre-configured to send data to your Logit.io Stack via Logstash.

Copy the configuration file below and overwrite the contents of filebeat.yml.

# ============================== Filebeat modules ==============================
filebeat.config.modules:
    path: ${path.config}/modules.d/*.yml
    reload.enabled: false
    #reload.period: 10s
 
# ================================== Outputs ===================================
# ------------------------------ Logstash Output -------------------------------
output.logstash:
    hosts: ["@logstash.host:@logstash.sslPort"]
    loadbalance: true
    ssl.enabled: true
 
# ================================= Processors =================================
processors:
    - add_host_metadata:
        when.not.contains.tags: forwarded
    - add_cloud_metadata: ~
    - add_docker_metadata: ~
    - add_kubernetes_metadata: ~

If you're running Filebeat 7 add this code block to the end. Otherwise, you can leave it out.

# ... For Filebeat 7 only ...
filebeat.registry.path: /var/lib/filebeat

If you're running Filebeat 6 add this code block to the end. Otherwise, you can leave it out.

# ... For Filebeat 6 only ...
registry_file: /var/lib/filebeat/registry

Validate your YAML

It's a good idea to run the configuration file through a YAML validator to rule out indentation errors, clean up extra characters, and check if your YAML file is valid. Yamllint.com (opens in a new tab) is a great choice.

Validate configuration

cd <EXTRACTED_ARCHIVE>
.\@beatname.exe -e -c @beatname.yml

If the yml file is invalid, will print an error loading config file error message with details on how to correct the problem. If you have issues starting see "How To Diagnose No Data In Stack" below to troubleshoot.

Start Filebeat

To start Filebeat, run in Powershell:

Start-Service filebeat

Check Logit.io for your logs

Data should now have been sent to your Stack.

View My Data

If you don't see take a look at How to diagnose no data in Stack below for how to diagnose common issues.

How to diagnose no data in Stack

If you don't see data appearing in your Stack after following the steps, visit the Help Centre guide for steps to diagnose no data appearing in your Stack or Chat to support now.

Custom Kibana Dashboards

The NGINX module comes with custom Kibana dashboards. To view your dashboards for any of your Logit.io stacks, launch Logs and choose Dashboards.

Custom Kibana Dashboard Preview

NGINX Logs Overview

NGINX is an open-source HTTP server and reverse proxy that was created by Igor Sysoev & released in 2004. It has gone on to power many of the web's highest traffic sites (including Netflix, Google & Wordpress) as it is a highly reliable server for enabling businesses to scale their operations.

Viewing NGINX log files can allow you to see spikes in 5XX/4XX status codes affecting the performance of your applications, and allow your Dev teams to drill down into the data to resolve errors. Analysing these at scale can rapidly drain your resources if your teams need to configure separate parsing, configuration, visualisation and reporting tools for a single large NGINX instance.

Many NGINX log analyzers can slow down the process of troubleshooting & increase time to resolution unnecessarily as they often struggle to process large amounts of log data. The Logit.io log management platform is built on ELK and can easily process large amounts of NGINX server data for root cause analysis.

Our platform is built to scale with your infrastructure, once data is migrated to your ELK Stack you'll be able to benefit from automatic parsing with Logstash and visualise your NGINX metrics in Kibana. Alert on errors and notify your teams of spikes in real-time with our integrated alerting features that can send notifications to a variety of sources including Jira, Opsgenie, Slack, PagerDuty & Webhooks.

In case you need any further assistance with sending your NGINX data to Logstash & Elasticsearch we're here to help. Just get in touch with our support team via live chat & we'll be happy to assist.

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