---
approvers:
- crassirostris
- piosz
title: Logging Using Elasticsearch and Kibana
---

On the Google Compute Engine (GCE) platform, the default logging support targets
[Stackdriver Logging](https://cloud.google.com/logging/), which is described in detail
in the [Logging With Stackdriver Logging](/docs/user-guide/logging/stackdriver).

This article describes how to set up a cluster to ingest logs into
[Elasticsearch](https://www.elastic.co/products/elasticsearch) and view
them using [Kibana](https://www.elastic.co/products/kibana), as an alternative to
Stackdriver Logging when running on GCE. Note that Elasticsearch and Kibana
cannot be setup automatically in the Kubernetes cluster hosted on
Google Kubernetes Engine, you have to deploy it manually.

To use Elasticsearch and Kibana for cluster logging, you should set the
following environment variable as shown below when creating your cluster with
kube-up.sh:

```shell
KUBE_LOGGING_DESTINATION=elasticsearch
```

You should also ensure that `KUBE_ENABLE_NODE_LOGGING=true` (which is the default for the GCE platform).

Now, when you create a cluster, a message will indicate that the Fluentd log
collection daemons that run on each node will target Elasticsearch:

```shell
$ cluster/kube-up.sh
...
Project: kubernetes-satnam
Zone: us-central1-b
... calling kube-up
Project: kubernetes-satnam
Zone: us-central1-b
+++ Staging server tars to Google Storage: gs://kubernetes-staging-e6d0e81793/devel
+++ kubernetes-server-linux-amd64.tar.gz uploaded (sha1 = 6987c098277871b6d69623141276924ab687f89d)
+++ kubernetes-salt.tar.gz uploaded (sha1 = bdfc83ed6b60fa9e3bff9004b542cfc643464cd0)
Looking for already existing resources
Starting master and configuring firewalls
Created [https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/kubernetes-satnam/zones/us-central1-b/disks/kubernetes-master-pd].
NAME                 ZONE          SIZE_GB TYPE   STATUS
kubernetes-master-pd us-central1-b 20      pd-ssd READY
Created [https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/kubernetes-satnam/regions/us-central1/addresses/kubernetes-master-ip].
+++ Logging using Fluentd to elasticsearch
```

The per-node Fluentd pods, the Elasticsearch pods, and the Kibana pods should
all be running in the kube-system namespace soon after the cluster comes to
life.

```shell
$ kubectl get pods --namespace=kube-system
NAME                                           READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
elasticsearch-logging-v1-78nog                 1/1       Running   0          2h
elasticsearch-logging-v1-nj2nb                 1/1       Running   0          2h
fluentd-elasticsearch-kubernetes-node-5oq0     1/1       Running   0          2h
fluentd-elasticsearch-kubernetes-node-6896     1/1       Running   0          2h
fluentd-elasticsearch-kubernetes-node-l1ds     1/1       Running   0          2h
fluentd-elasticsearch-kubernetes-node-lz9j     1/1       Running   0          2h
kibana-logging-v1-bhpo8                        1/1       Running   0          2h
kube-dns-v3-7r1l9                              3/3       Running   0          2h
monitoring-heapster-v4-yl332                   1/1       Running   1          2h
monitoring-influx-grafana-v1-o79xf             2/2       Running   0          2h
```

The `fluentd-elasticsearch` pods gather logs from each node and send them to
the `elasticsearch-logging` pods, which are part of a
[service](/docs/concepts/services-networking/service/) named `elasticsearch-logging`. These
Elasticsearch pods store the logs and expose them via a REST API.
The `kibana-logging` pod provides a web UI for reading the logs stored in
Elasticsearch, and is part of a service named `kibana-logging`.

The Elasticsearch and Kibana services are both in the `kube-system` namespace
and are not directly exposed via a publicly reachable IP address. To reach them,
follow the instructions for [Accessing services running in a cluster](/docs/concepts/cluster-administration/access-cluster/#accessing-services-running-on-the-cluster).

If you try accessing the `elasticsearch-logging` service in your browser, you'll
see a status page that looks something like this:

![Elasticsearch Status](/images/docs/es-browser.png)

You can now type Elasticsearch queries directly into the browser, if you'd
like. See [Elasticsearch's documentation](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/search-uri-request.html)
for more details on how to do so.

Alternatively, you can view your cluster's logs using Kibana (again using the
[instructions for accessing a service running in the cluster](/docs/user-guide/accessing-the-cluster/#accessing-services-running-on-the-cluster)).
The first time you visit the Kibana URL you will be presented with a page that
asks you to configure your view of the ingested logs. Select the option for
timeseries values and select `@timestamp`. On the following page select the
`Discover` tab and then you should be able to see the ingested logs.
You can set the refresh interval to 5 seconds to have the logs
regularly refreshed.

Here is a typical view of ingested logs from the Kibana viewer:

![Kibana logs](/images/docs/kibana-logs.png)

Kibana opens up all sorts of powerful options for exploring your logs! For some
ideas on how to dig into it, check out [Kibana's documentation](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/kibana/current/discover.html).

