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Kibana Integration

Longitude and Elastic Stack Integration

  1. Components and Installation Requirements
  2. Elasticsearch Configuration
  3. Kibana Configuration
  4. Longitude Configuration
  5. Dashboards

Components and Installation Requirements

Longitude agentlessly collects key performance indicators from servers, network devices, and applications using appropriate
protocols and API’s including WMI, PowerShell, SSH, vSphere API, JDBC, SNMP, and sends the collected data to Elasticsearch.

Elasticsearch is a NoSQL database based on the Lucene search engine that houses Longitude performance indicators and
Longitude event data

Kibana is the web interface that accesses Elasticsearch to deliver a rich set of searching and visualization capabilities
(i.e. bar charts, pie charts, line charts, tables, and maps).

Minimum Hardware Requirements

  • Dedicated Windows 2008, Windows 2012, Windows 2016, or Windows 2019 Server
  • 2x 2+ GHz Processor
  • 16GB of Main memory
  • 100 GB of the fastest disk possible – SSD is preferred

Note:
Longitude, Elasticsearch and Kibana may be installed on different servers.

Elasticsearch Installation Instructions

  1. Install Java 8.
  2. Download and install Elasticsearch 6.5.4 – the install will create and start an Elasticsearch service. If you are installing on Windows, download the MSI version.
  3. Verify Elasticsearch is operational by viewing its web server status at http://localhost:9200. The status page should be similar to:
    {
    “name” : “KIBANA”,
    “cluster_name” : “elasticsearch”,
    “cluster_uuid” : “UurjjM4OSSWtrKcjzb8wwg”,
    “version” : {
    “number” : “6.5.1”,
    “build_flavor” : “unknown”,
    “build_type” : “unknown”,
    “build_hash” : “8c58350”,
    “build_date” : “2018-11-16T02:22:42.182257Z”,
    “build_snapshot” : false,
    “lucene_version” : “7.5.0”,
    “minimum_wire_compatibility_version” : “5.6.0”,
    “minimum_index_compatibility_version” : “5.0.0”
    },
    “tagline” : “You Know, for Search”
    }
  4. If Longitude and Elasticsearch are installed on different servers then Elasticsearch will need to be configured to use a network address as follows:
    1. By default the Elasticsearch configuration files in Windows are written to c:\ProgramData\Elastic\Elasticsearch\config. If this directory does not exist, run:
      echo %ES_PATH_CONF%

      to get the location of the Elasticsearch configuration files. Please note that depending on your File Browser settings the ProgramData directory may be hidden.

    2. Make a backup copy of elasticsearch.yml and open the file in a text editor.
    3. Edit the “node.name” field to be your server name.
    4. Add the “network.host” field to be the network address for your Elasticsearch server. This will be the address used in the URL to contact Elasticsearch – for example: “elasticsearch.company.com”.
    5. Restart the Elasticsearch service.
    6. Verify that you can reach the Elasticsearch status page from a different server – in our example, at: http://elasticsearch.company.com:9200

Kibana Installation Instructions

  1. Download and install Kibana 6.5.
  2. Start Kibana by running {Kibana_install_dir}\bin\kibana.bat
  3. Open http://localhost:5601 to verify that Kibana is operational. You should see the following web page:
    Kibana default page
  4. Make a backup copy of {Kibana_install_dir}\config\kibana.yml and open kibana.yml in a text editor.
  5. Change the server.host value in kibana.yml from “localhost” to be the network address of your kibana server (for example, “kibana.company.com”).
  6. If Longitude and Elasticsearch are installed on different servers then change the value for elasticsearch.url from localhost to the name used in the elasticsearch.yml (for example: “elasticsearch.company.com”).
  7. Restart {Kibana_install_dir}\bin\kibana.bat.
  8. Verify that you can open the default webpage – in our example: http://kibana.company.com:5601.
  9. Install the Longitude Dashboard definitions:
    1. Download Longitude.json.
    2. Open the Kibana home page.
    3. Select “Default” in the lower left corner
    4. Click “Management” at the bottom of the left menu.
    5. Select “Saved Objects” on the Management page.
    6. Follow the prompts to import the Longitude.json file.
  10. Optional:
    The Kibana installation will not install Kibana as a service, but third party tools such as NSSM can be used to create a Kibana service.

    1. To install nssm, open a command prompt and change directory to the nssm.exe folder.
    2. Enter nssm install on the command prompt
    3. In the path field browse to the kibana.bat folder
    4. Enter Kibana for the service name and click Install

Configuring Longitude for Kibana

  1. Download and install Longitude.
  2. Log on to the Longitude server.
  3. Got to {Longitude_installation_directory}\tomcat\webapps\webui\config\ and rename the kibana_collections.yml_orig file to kibana_collections.yml.
  4. If Elasticsearch has been configured to use a network address other than “localhost”, edit kibana_collections.yml to use the correct address for Elasticsearch. To do this globally replace all occurrences of: port: localhost:9200 with the new Elasticsearch address (for example, port: elasticsearch.company.com:9200)..
  5. Resart the Heroix Longitude Web UI Service
  6. Log in to the Longitude Web UI and monitor the IT infrastructure.
  7. Longitude can use multiple Remote Statistics Servers to collect data. Please contact Heroix Support at [email protected] to configure Longitude when Remote Statistics Servers are in use.

Longitude Data in Kibana Dashboard


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